Loving Doctor Jekyll
by Fate VII
Summary: Seto Kaiba's life is just peachy until he stumbles across a bruised-up Ryou, and in a fit of uncharacteristic goodwill, kidnaps him and takes him to the Kaiba mansion, not realizing that Mokuba and Bakura are going to be dragged into the chaos that ensues
1. In Which Ryou and Bakura Are Very Angry

Fate: If you're reading this, you're reading a more revised version, as of 20-11-04. Hurrah for vacations, free time, and movies. I love this story, but Isis knows how it's going to end. Meh.

Disclaimer: Ah...crap. Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't belong to Fate, and the cursing will be at an all-time high in this chapter, due to Ryou and Bakura being very pissy. It won't normally be this bad. I think.

* * *

**::chapter one::in which ryou and bakura fight::**

"Kaiba, it isn't going to kill you."

"Hn."

"Just...just do me this one favor, okay? It's not like you're not going that way _anyway._"

"Hn."

"Kaiba. Please."

"..."

This argument had been going on for the past fifteen minutes, without much variation, by the counter in the Kame Game Shop. The participants – an undead, vertically challenged pharaoh, and a bad-tempered, teenage multimillionaire – were so used to these frequent disagreements that they practically argued by rote.

Such is life in Domino City.

"Look, the poor boy isn't going to maul you or anything. All you have to do is go up to the door, give him the damn package, say, "Yami sent this," and leave. You don't even have to be polite or anything, because we _all_ know that would just be _too_ stressing on you, Mr. CEO."

Yami knew quite well that he was winning. Seto tended to recede into unintelligible monosyllables or sulky silences when an argument was not going in his favor.

"Oh, fine, now will you shut up?" Seto finally burst out.

"Certainly," Yami said, handing him a small brown-wrapped package.

"So what am I carting around, anyway?" Seto snarled as he tucked it into his pocket.

"..."

"Well?"

"You wanted me to shut up," Yami said innocently. At Seto's incensed look, he hastily continued. "It's an order of some rather rare and nasty cards. You may _not_ steal them."

"I'm sure I already have them," Seto pronounced arrogantly. "Why does that wimp want these cards in his deck anyway?"

Yami rolled his eyes. "His entire deck is full of those sorts of cards. He's been upgrading lately through us. Demon cards pouring in left and right."

Seto made a noise that was a cross between a sigh and a growl, then stalked out of the shop.

Yami smirked. "This should be interesting."

"Yami...that wasn't nice," Yugi admonished, finally emerging from the supply room.

"If you disagreed so strongly, why didn't you put a halt to it?" Yami inquired.

"Oh, all right, there could be an entertainment factor, but really..." Yugi shook his head disparagingly.

Yami sighed and hoisted himself up to sit on the counter, swinging his feet idly. "I don't know why I asked him to give those cards to Ryou. Well, yes, I do, Ryou's been waiting for that shipment for a while and I know that lately he hasn't been in a mood to leave the house, all things considered –_damn_ that tomb robber – but still...why Kaiba?" Yami mused.

Yugi rolled his eyes. "Because you could make him your messenger boy for a day. Cheap thrills, yami." He shrugged.

"Well, yes..." Yami sighed. "I'm for calling Ryou in half an hour and seeing what happened," he added mischievously.

Yugi looked at his watch. "This _should_ be interesting, indeed."

* * *

"What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?!"

"Wrong with _me?_ I'm not the goddamn living dead tomb robber who's going around sneaking into clubs and getting smashed, or maxing out every one of Father's credit cards, or slicing their arms open every third Saturday, or what-the-fuck-ever other shit you do, you fucking psychopath!"

"You insolent little – you – I – JUST BURN IN HELL!"

"Oooh, witty repartee. Oh, and by the way, if I have to clean up any more blood that I didn't spill myself, you are spending a week hanging by your pointy toenails from the goddamn ROOF! I don't care if it's yours or someone else's, you are SO DEAD FOR IT!"

"I'm already dead, you little shit! Haven't we been over this? As a matter of fact, it was you who raised the point!"

"Fuck you." This statement was punctuated by a swift left to the jaw.

Bakura reeled back, red eyes flaring up in pain and anger. This was swiftly followed by a Menacing Glare of Doom (tm) and the snatching up of a knife from the nearby counter. "Yadonushiiii..."

Ryou merely stuck out his tongue and grabbed a knife of his own. "I got the butcher knife, and all you have is your switchblade. Ha!"

Bakura reached into his pocket and pulled out a dagger.

There was a very pregnant pause as the two glowered at each other.

"I do not want to hurt you," Bakura finally snarled. "But you hit me first."

"You started the goddamn argument!" Ryou shot back.

"No, _you_ did!"

"This argument started exactly eleven days ago when I came back from a club and you pitched a fucking FIT!" Ryou screeched.

"_I'm_ supposed to be the one who goes to clubs! Not you! You're the hikari! You're supposed to be all nice and shit!" Bakura howled.

"Oh, I'm the nice-and-pure-and-sweet little hikari, who gets beat up on by their nasty old yami and never has any fun, right? Screw that!" Ryou snapped venomously. "I have just as much right to go out and party as you do, Radamnit."

"I can't take care of you if you keep going out and getting even more smashed than me! A _snake_ could hold more alcohol than you!" Bakura wailed, flinging his arms out for emphasis. One of the knives flew from his fingers and lodged itself in the wall.

Ryou and Bakura both stared at it for a few seconds.

"Damn," Ryou finally said.

"I didn't know I could do that," Bakura added.

"You've never thrown knives before?" Ryou inquired curiously.

"Hell of a way to lose a dagger," Bakura informed him.

"Oh. Where were we?" Ryou inquired. "Fighting or making out?"

"The former, sadly. A snake has more alcohol tolerance than you do."

"I can take _five_ shots without getting noticeably drunk! That's damn decent. Look at Yugi! The kid gets trashed with one shot of vodka! I mean, you fed me a Jello shot without knowing what it was, and I didn't collapse until a LOT later! And I had a lot _more_ to drink after _that_. So there!"

"But I'm supposed to take _care_ of you!" Bakura whined. "And it's so much easier when you just stay at home!"

"Excuse me?" Ryou demanded, brandishing the butcher knife. "You want me to hide in this stupid empty house and pretend to be a miserable little rabbit so you can polish your bloody ego? If you want to protect me, you can damn well CATCH me if you want me around for your convenience!"

Bakura angrily and somewhat ineptly chucked the other knife at the nearest wall and stormed towards Ryou. "Fine then. I will!"

"Oh, will you?" Ryou snarled, backing up rapidly.

And hitting the wall.

"Hell yeah," Bakura whispered, deftly removing the butcher knife from the vicinity with another unpracticed but effective flick of the wrist.

"You're putting holes in the walls," Ryou said rebelliously.

"Oh, am I?" Bakura retorted furiously, grabbing Ryou's shoulders and shaking him hard enough with each word that his head slammed into the wall a couple times.

"Ow! Bastard!" Ryou spat, flinging one hand into Bakura's solar plexus.

"Holy...Ra..." Bakura wheezed, staggering back. "What...the _hell_...was _that_?!"

"My fist," Ryou sniped.

Bakura tried growling again, found it difficult due to his breathing problems, and settled for once more grabbing Ryou's shoulders. However, this time he shoved Ryou onto the floor for their own private makeout party.

With tongue.

And sharpened fingernails.

And pointy teeth.

/Ow! Heyyyy! You...SADIST!/

::Shut up...whoa, where the HELL did you learn to do THAT?::

/So you _want_ me to go to clubs more often?/

The pair broke apart for gasps of air and for more verbal skirmishing, as well as the surveying of bruises. So far, Ryou had amassed a purpling cheekbone, fingermarks on his collarbone, wrists, shoulders, and back, and a few more random painful spots due to being thrown into solid objects. Bakura was nursing his jawbone and chest, as well as his upper arms, shins, and one eye.

And that was just _today's_ collection of injuries. Best not to wonder about yesterday. The bruises were of the sort that should not be seen in decent company.

But the narrator digresses.

"Why do you give a damn about where I go to have fun?" Ryou yelled up at his yami, who was now kneeling on his chest and pinning his arms with his hands. "What's it to you? _I_ never complained when _you_ went out partying all the time!"

"But I'm – I – I know what I'm _doing!_ You're innocent!"

"Me, innocent? With _you_ living in my head for ten years now? Hey, get your teeth off of my neck!"

"Mrr. No."

"Yow! Hey! Let me up!"

"Uh-uh."

"You just _licked_ me! Yamiii!"

"Don't tell me you didn't like it," Bakura retorted with a sniff, then went back to what he'd been doing.

Ryou giggled. "Will you stop? I'm supposed to be _yelling_ at you!"

"And I'm supposed to be keeping you from getting hurt, despite all the bruises I have been showering upon you lately. Keeping you from getting a sore throat is the best I can do, given the circumstances," Bakura replied smugly.

Ryou rolled his eyes. "I can't _think_ when you're doing that. Please, c'mon, back off for a second."

"M'kay." Bakura leaned back.

For precisely one second.

"YAMIIIIII!"

"Mrr?"

"It is _very_ difficult for me to be telling you off when you're displaying your obsession with the taste of my throat," Ryou said severely.

"Exactly!"

"But it's supposed to be you screaming at me. I feel very silly screaming to myself," Ryou informed him. "Wha – do that _again_. RIGHT NOW."

"I thought you wanted me to stop," Bakura said sweetly.

"Yami, you and that tone do _not_ mix, and I _said,_ do that – oh. Oh..."

Bakura snickered.

And of course, someone knocked on the door right at that moment, just to prove that the universe really _was_ out to get them.

Bakura jerked upright, forgetting that he was still pinning Ryou to the floor. "What the _hell_ do you want? Bugger off!"

"Why don't you lock your doors, if you don't want to be disturbed?" the intruder snapped, peering around the opening door. "What the – who? What?"

Bakura blinked. "Er?"

Ryou burst out laughing. "Yami, gerroff!" The two scrambled somewhat painfully to their feet. Bakura's short attention span led him to start wandering around the room in order to pry the knives from the walls. "Kaiba Seto, am I correct?"

"Erm. Yes," Seto said warily. "You're...Bakura?"

"Usually we call him Bakura," Ryou said, jerking a thumb at the other boy. "Most people can't tell us apart at first glance."

"You're not twins," Seto said, still with that wary tone.

"Nope," Ryou said. "I'm his reincarnated form, part-time fuckbuddy, something of a friend, and sparring partner. Ooh. that was too much information, wasn't it? Thought so. Hey, wait a minute. You're Kaiba Mokuba's brother. If he's been kidnapped again, I swear it wasn't us."

"Ah..." Seto looked thoroughly disturbed. "Yami asked me to deliver something to you, and, ah...can I talk to you?"

"You want him to piss off," Ryou said, nodding at Bakura. "Yami. Go somewhere else."

"Make me," Bakura retorted, grabbing Ryou's collar and dragging him closer.

"We're going somewhere else now," Seto said hurriedly, unlatching Ryou and tugging him out the door.

"Er. I'll be right back," Ryou said superfluously as he was hustled out the door. Which promptly closed after him.

Bakura stared at the door, knives in hand. _What the _hell _just happened here? Why'd _he _turn up after all this time? And...why outside?_

The sound of a car door slamming and tires screeching served to answer the final question.

_SHIT!_

Bakura bolted to the door and flung it open, only to see a black limo vanishing down the street.

_The fuck...he just...I...I don't fucking believe this!_ Bakura thought furiously. ::Ryou! What the _hell?::_

/I'm...not sure. But he looks pretty freaked out by something. I think it's the bruises? Oh, but we got those cards in from the game shop. And...um...maybe he'll give me back?/ Ryou said hopefully. /I haven't finished yelling at you yet./

Bakura flung down all the knives but his favorite, which went into a sheath at his side. _If I go right there, we may never know _why _this is happening._

Then he recalled a fragment of a sentence. _"Yami asked me..."_ _Oh, fuck the pharaoh upside down and sideways! He _must _have engineered this, and duped that CEO into this. For Ra's sake, the man hasn't seen Ryou in years. I don't think he even knew we were separate people!_

_But still..._

_I don't want to risk it yet._

Bakura shoved boots on over the jeans he was wearing, then watched as the Ring oozed through his shirt and hovered in the air. He grabbed one side and hissed, "Take me to my hikari."

The points stirred and glowed, pointing left.

"Right then," Bakura muttered, and began making tracks down the road, keeping an eye out for a convenient car to commandeer should he need it.

_I go STABBY THINGS..._

* * *

Yugi stared at Yami. "Um. Yami. I've tried calling and calling, but no one picks up the phone. I mean, I don't think Kaiba tried to knock them over the head with his briefcase or anything like he did with me, and I don't think Bakura would just send him to the Shadow Realm without provocation after all these years, so..."

Yami shrugged. "They might not have been home, despite what's been going on this past week. Maybe they're shagging somewhere in their house and Kaiba can't find them. Or maybe he _did_ find them. We may never know."

Yugi hung up the phone. "Whatever. I'm sure it's nothing."

Ha.

* * *

Duel: Allo everyone. I am here to request that you press the purple button on your lower left and fill out the bit where you send in comments to feed Fate's starving soul. If you don't, I shall send a murderous Mokuba after you. And since no one seems to like Mokuba/Bakura, or psycho-murderer Mokuba, or Mokuba in any situation other than as a whiny kid or kidnapping bait, this won't be a good thing. So review. 


	2. In Which Mokuba Kaiba Is Very Frustrated

Fate: Whee! I like this story and I have nooo idea why. No one else seems to like it.

Disclaimer: It's not ours. Get it got it good.

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**::chapter two::in which mokuba kaiba is very disturbed::**

"Ah..."

"Yes?"

"You seem to have kidnapped me," Ryou pointed out, looking reproachfully over a handful of demon cards at Seto Kaiba.

"It's only temporary," Seto snapped, determinedly not returning the glance Ryou was casting at him. "That...that other person in there, he was...?"

"My yami. Could've sworn you cleared that one up," Ryou filled in absently. Then he blinked and scowled at the cards he was holding. "_Why_ have you abducted me?"

"Have you looked in a mirror lately?" was the clipped reply.

Ryou bit back the response that first rose to his lips--_Oh Ra, you're really the fashion police!_--and instead settled for, "I guess you think my yami uses me as a punching bag."

This elicited a curt nod. "Didn't help that he was in the process of it while I was there."

Ryou rolled his eyes behind the screen of cards. "Do you really think such an egocentric person as my yami would want to regularly beat up on someone who looked just like him? He prefers to keep me caged up at home and pretend he's this great and wonderful protector," he explained, years of politeness being the only thing preventing him from adding a good deal of condescension to the words.

"I don't know your...yami. Nor do I know you." _And I don't want to know you_ hovered in the air between them, an unspoken but very obvious conclusion.

Ryou sighed, almost impatiently but not quite. "Then why am I sitting in your limousine not of my own free will?" He peered at the harassed-looking CEO over the cards he was holding. "_Don't_ tell me that the pharaoh at the game shop put you up to this and you're going to deliver me to them in a neat little package, subdued by the arrival of some nice rare cards and sans ferocious yami."

"I'm not his errand boy," Seto retorted.

Ryou decided to abandon his pose of 'sweet little innocent hikari' and wave the handful of cards under Seto's nose. "And I'm sure these just wandered into your limo on their own, Kaiba-sama," he said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

Seto blinked and stared at Ryou in consternation. "You're...very different from when I last saw you," he said carefully.

"You've never seen me," Ryou said simply. "Not at Duelist Kingdom, not in Battle City, and I've certainly never wandered into your pampered circle anytime other than when I play...because then I have a shot at being your equal. No, you've only seen my yami playacting at being me...or not." He shrugged. "I still don't understand what I'm doing here. I know I look like a girl, but I'm not great material for a one-night stand."

Seto turned magenta, spluttered something, and turned away furiously, lips moving as he counted silently to twenty in French. "No one put me up to it," Seto continued. "It was an impulse." He moved his head to look straight at Ryou. "I don't know if I regret it," he added thoughtfully. "Given the provocation, that is."

"And what was that provocation, Kaiba-sama?" Ryou asked curiously.

"You're right," Seto said abruptly. "I don't know you. And you don't know me, if you ask that so innocently. And...suffice it to say that I can't answer you."

Ryou nodded. "Then we're at an impasse." He reached up and touched one of the bruises on his face, noted how Seto's pupils dilated when he did so, and looked away, still with one hand to his face. "I won't say he doesn't mean it, because he certainly does, but if you knew anything about the makeup sex you would have never spirited me away," Ryou informed him. "Although I'm a bit glad you _don't_ know."

Seto choked on his breath and declined to answer. He instead reached into a pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and hit one of the automatic dial numbers.

* * *

"Sir?"

"Eh?"

"You have a call on line one," said the secretary from around the door.

"Oh, thank God." The secretary prudently extricated her head from the aperture and closed the door, retreating to her desk and rolling her eyes internally at the mess that had been made of the room she'd seen. _He can really turn that place upside down when he's frustrated._

"Ehh...KaibaCorp, Kaiba Mokuba speaking..." The boy slid on the phone's headset without a glance at the caller ID, more occupied with feverishly knotting his long, bushy hair and chewing a pencil to shreds as he glowered at the half-completed diagrams of the latest hologram microchips. _What the hell does he think he's trying to do with these?_

"Otouto?"

Mokuba spat out a mouthful of splinters and glared at the cylinder of sharpened graphite. "Do you have any idea how much I _hate_ you at the moment?" he demanded wrathfully.

"Kid, please, I don't want to hear it," Seto said wearily. "Not now."

Mokuba blinked, the microchips becoming a lot less annoying all of a sudden. He leaned back in the chair, grabbed another pencil, and began gnawing on it. "Niisama? Are you...? I...I mean...you sound tired. You _never_..."

"I have a bit of a problem," Seto said. "When will you be home?"

"You're not coming _back_?" Mokuba asked, the microchips looming large once more. "But...but these – "

"Leave it, whatever it is," Seto said, sounding almost eerily calm. "Just...pack up early."

"What the _hell_ are you on about? You _never –_ "

"I'm doing a lot of things that 'I never', otouto," Seto cut him off. "Including kidnapping random white-haired friends of Yugi's."

_"Hvwaaaaaah?!"_ Mokuba overbalanced, tipping the chair backwards completely, causing him to spit pencil shards all over himself and bash his head on the floor. "Ow..."

"Mokuba? Are you – what _happened?"_

Mokuba decided not to get up. "I just had a fairly decent-sized shock, is all. You did _what?! _Hang on, white _hair_? Oh God, niisama, I've had enough bad run-ins with those two..."

"Can we not go into this yet?" Seto pleaded.

"Meh," Mokuba said thoughtfully, rolling over and staring out the wall-sized window. "I'll go home now. It's not like I'll be much more useful here except to decimate your pencil collection and shred paper. Damn you and your overnight innovations – what have you _done_ to these diagrams?"

He could picture Seto grinning wryly – one of those rare grins that it seemed only he got to see – before he replied with "Overclocked, kid?"

"No shit. Have I mentioned I _hate_ you?" With that he hung up, hoping that it had at least partially lifted his brother's mood.

Mokuba sighed, brushed off all the pencil shards, and began straightening the papers to lock away in the safe hidden in the closet behind a couple of rather dusty spare suits, a pair of blue high heels, and Seto's collection of...er..._questionable_ magazines.

Mokuba then pulled on his coat, snatched up his bookcase with his work papers, laptop, and end-of-term homework, and took off for the elevator.

* * *

The wheels of the limousine suddenly crunched on gravel. Seto promptly relaxed at the welcome sound, though the gesture would not have been noticed by anyone who didn't know him well (read: the entire world save for Mokuba).

"We've arrived," he said to the silent boy curled up on the opposite bench seat.

Ryou looked over at him with blank eyes. "Where are we?"

"My house," Seto said shortly as the limo glided to a stop.

Ryou's eyes unfocused briefly before he smiled tensely. "You make this all sound like a playdate."

Seto lowered his eyes and climbed out of the door that his chauffeur opened for him, barely remembering to take his briefcase as well. He stopped, waiting for Ryou to follow, and when the boy didn't, turned back irritably. "Come on, then."

Ryou bit his lip and slithered out the door, wrapping his arms around himself defensively with his eyes darting around nervously. Then he gasped and froze. "Oh..."

"What?" Seto asked, wondering what there was that would provoke such a reaction.

"It's so pretty..." Ryou was staring unabashedly at the mansion. "You live there? You're lucky," he whispered, eyes shining. "Yami would give an arm and a leg to live somewhere half as lovely."

Seto glanced into the garage, searching for Mokuba's motorcycle. _Good. He's back...and alive. Kami-sama, but he's going to get himself killed riding around on that thing..._

"So I suppose you'd like to see the interior as well?" he found himself asking Ryou dryly.

Ryou looked at the ground hastily. "Yeah, I'm a sucker for pretty things too...it's a trait yami and I share," he said, neatly dodging the question.

"Come inside," Seto told him, leading the way with his hands shoved in his pockets and the briefcase dangling inelegantly off his left wrist. Ryou hesitated, then followed, a line of pink scoring his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose.

The chauffeur was standing impatiently by the gate, which he finally swung open by punching in a code when Seto reached the iron bars.

"I have to get these replaced, or topped with barbed wire, or something," Seto murmured absently to himself as he walked through the gate, Ryou tagging awkwardly at his heels.

"Um...why?" Ryou inquired, then looked studiously at the gravel underfoot and pretended to not have said anything when Seto glanced back at him.

_He's not so brave now,_ Seto noted internally. "Mokuba keeps climbing over the walls and the fence. He's kicked off a lot of the spines that way," he replied.

"They must not have been well made then," Ryou muttered, then resumed his intense study of the gravel.

Seto was feeling a bit vengeful over his loss in their tête-à-tête and wouldn't have minded discomfiting Ryou a bit more out of sheer spite, but since he found himself standing on the steps of his house and having the door opened for him, the opportunity was lost.

"Niisama? Is that you?" The yell rang down the stairwell almost before Seto stepped through the doorway.

"Yes," he called back.

There was a thump and a clattering noise from upstairs, then Mokuba slid down the banister and vaulted neatly off the end, landing in front of him. "What happened? You sounded so worried on the phone and I – "

Seto, noticing the object of Mokuba's sudden scrutiny, merely said, "I was being quite serious when I said I'd kidnapped a friend of Yugi's."

"I – I know, but I..." Mokuba reached up and began absently and clumsily braiding one of the few untangled locks left in his hair. "This is insane," he muttered. "Niisama, please..." Mokuba reached out and touched Seto's shoulder. "Is it...?"

"You saw it too, then." It wasn't a question that Seto posed. He sighed and looked back over at Ryou, who was leaning on the wall by the door, arms once more crossed defensively over his chest. "Will you excuse us for a moment?"

Ryou nodded tightly, eyes focused on the wall slightly to the right of the two Kaiba brothers.

"Our thanks, Bakura-san," Seto said, and allowed himself to be dragged by Mokuba into one of the adjoining rooms.

* * *

Ryou sighed and shifted his weight nervously. It had been fine and dandy in the limo, but then he'd had to go and get all sparkly-eyed over the house (house? Ha, mansion was more like it) and allowed himself to be shoved around again like a helpless doll...

He blinked and looked up. The two brothers had left the door open. Ryou sighed and, out of force of habit, got up to close the door. He did so dislike messiness.

_Well...if nothing else, this place is wonderful. It's gorgeous and it's clean,_ he reminded himself as he quietly crossed the room.

He halted when he reached the door, staring unabashedly at its occupants.

Seto Kaiba was sitting with his back to the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest, digging his hands through his bangs in what looked like frustration. Mokuba was kneeling next to him, one arm around his brother's shoulders and the other hand on Seto's knee, resting their foreheads together and whispering urgently.

Ryou slowly closed the door, crossed back to the door, and looked at it blankly.

/Yami?/

::Ryou! What the _hell_ is going on? All you say is that you think you'll be returned and that you're fine and you – ::

/Yami...there's something very odd going on here,/ Ryou said internally.

::No shit! This lunatic who hasn't seen you in years shows up out of nowhere and kidnaps you! What's so normal about that, I ask you?::

/It's even weirder than that,/ Ryou said. /Much, much weirder./

::Well, do you want me to just come there?:: Bakura asked practically.

Ryou considered this. /No...not right now. Things are pretty tenuous around here, and I don't think I want them worse./

::All right,:: Bakura said grudgingly. ::Are you moving or going anywhere?::

/No, I'm in the Kaiba mansion,/ Ryou said. /It's...you'll see when you get there. You're tracking me with the Ring?/

::Doing my damnedest, yes. Yadonushi...:: Bakura paused. ::I don't have to be there physically, you know. I can stay in the Ring – ::

Ryou closed his eyes. /Not now. Maybe later, but not now./

::By the time we reach 'later', I'll already _be_ there,:: Bakura pointed out.

/Then your problem will be solved, no?/ Ryou said reasonably.

::Hn,:: Bakura replied. ::You know what? If you don't need me right now, I'll go talk to the pharaoh,:: he said acidly. ::Maybe _he_ can tell me what's going on.::

/Why would he know?/ Ryou wondered.

::Well, you're with what seems to be the source of the problem and you don't know what's going on, so I think we should look elsewhere for answers,:: Bakura said reasonably.

/M'kay. But yami...don't kill them until we've got all our shipments in,/ Ryou pleaded.

::All _right,_:: Bakura replied, sounding a bit annoyed. ::Picky, aren't you?:: The connection broke on the last word.

Ryou glared at the door, daring himself to fling it open and run screaming into the wilderness.

_I could just have yami blast them to pieces or make them forget me, but...I don't. Why? Why do I have to suffer through all this drama?_ Ryou wailed internally. He considered retreating into his soul room and having a good bout of kicking, screaming, throwing things at the walls, and otherwise expressing what he was feeling at the moment, but decided reluctantly against it and sat mutinously on the floor.

"I want to go home," he whispered, and suddenly realized how very true the statement was. He then flopped back on the ground and reiterated, "Screw the world, I just want to go home..."

* * *

**Liviania--** If it made sense you wouldn't know I'd written it. ;;

**Melissa--** Let's play the YGO drinking game!

**Bakuraluva-- **I think it's Ryou: 1 and Seto: 1 at this point.

**R Amethyst-- **Interesting's good.

**Dark Millenia-- **Believe me, if I knew that, life would be so much easier.

**higashikaze-- **I liked that bit too. Hee.

Duel: Review. Now. Or else.


	3. In Which Anzu Shows Her Verbal Prowess

Fate: I lub this story and I have no idea why.

Disclaimer: Too late. takes over Fate does not own Yu-Gi-Oh! She only owns a few pathetic drawings and a broken-down website and a cranky computer and an unpublished series! Oh, and two boxes of chocolate Penguin mints. But Yu-Gi-Oh by far outweighs them all, and she has it not! Bwa ha ha ha ha...

* * *

**::chapter three::in which bakura is very angry::**

Bakura was bordering on furious. When a yami is even so much as borderline furious, things tend to swiftly get messy. If said yami is armed with a deck and Sharp Pointy Things, gods help the target of their wrath.

However, Bakura was unaccustomed to being furious with Seto Kaiba. Thus, he made a leap of tomb-raiderly logic and concluded that Seto had made an excellent dupe for a certain pharaoh. So, being the very singleminded person that he was, Bakura abandoned his great hikari quest and went haring off to the Kame Game Shop, fuming the entire way.

He slammed the door open in a move reminiscent of a game-addicted CEO. Yami and Yugi both made strange squeaking noises and fell out of view off of the counter on which they had been previously...occupied.

Bakura stormed over to the counter and hopped up onto it, swinging his feet over so that he nearly kicked Yugi in the face. "What did you engineer _this_ time, pharaoh?" he snarled as Yugi scrambled back, seeking cover.

Yami blinked. "...the hell?"

Bakura growled wordlessly. "Are all those years of inbreeding finally catching up with you? You. Seto Kaiba. My hikari. Gone. _You,_" he added coherently.

"Seto Kaiba kidnapped Ryou?" Yugi gasped while Yami was busy looking puzzled.

"No shit," Bakura snapped.

"But how do _we_ come into this?" Yugi inquired.

Bakura began to wonder if the mental deficiency that Yami seemed to have developed was catching, especially through saliva. "You sent him, of course."

"Damn straight we sent him," Yugi retorted spiritedly, smacking away the foot swinging towards his face again. "But not to kidnap anyone. Yami bullied him into bringing you your shipment."

"Well, he _didn't_," Bakura snarled. "He pinched my hikari instead." He tried to 'accidentally' kick Yugi again for emphasis. Unfortunately, Yugi was prepared for such an occurrence and whacked the offending foot away with a convenient doorstop that had formerly been holding the supply room open.

"Yow!" Bakura yowled, and launched himself at Yugi.

"Mweep!" Yugi yelped, diving behind Yami for protection. Bakura 'oof'ed as he hit the ground, scrabbled uselessly for Yugi before he realized what had happened, then went scrambling after the pair bonded by the Millennium Puzzle.

"Nut, mother of Ra!" Yami exclaimed as he tried to scoot out of the way. Yugi determinedly held him in place rather than bail out as well. The resulting three-way wrestling match was possibly one of the most spectacular on that side of the Pacific.

"Ahem," a voice said quietly from above the three.

No one took any notice.

"Ahem," the voice repeated, a bit louder.

Still no response.

Sigh. "Look, if I'm interrupting something, then you could have at _least_ put up the 'CLOSED' sign. And did you drug Bakura with aphrodisiacs or something?"

0.05 seconds later, Bakura vaulted over the counter and past the speaker, flipping head over heels a few times and sprawling on his back by the door. "Aaagh," he remarked, staring at the ceiling. Yami and Yugi declined to supplement this statement, due to their taking the comment as excellent advice and resuming their activities from prior to Bakura's entrance.

Anzu decided not to say anything more in that vein, owing to the murderous look on the white-haired yami's face. "Where's Ryou?"

Bakura scrambled gracelessly to his feet and turned the full blast of his anger on the dark-haired girl in a look that would have crumbled stone. Anzu, faced with certain doom, merely folded her arms and _looked_ at Bakura. "I'm not impressed. Do you mind answering my question about my friend, or should I go back to making snide remarks about a threesome between those two and you?"

Bakura sulked briefly – his murderous look was pretty damn good in his eyes, and he'd seen some pretty nasty looks – then snapped, "In between pretending to be rabbits, your precious little spiky-haired friends seem to have duped Seto Kaiba into kidnapping my hikari."

"How long has it been since you last had a joint?" Anzu inquired.

Bakura glared at her.

"Right, so Seto Kaiba kidnapped Ryou for no reason whatsoever," Anzu said skeptically.

"Exactly," Bakura told her. "Wipe that look off your face."

Anzu ignored him with the ease of one who ignores three or four pesky teenage boys on a regular basis, and thus can handle pretty damn near anything or anyone. Proceeding to one of the tinted glass cases with a 'NEW!' placard, "Their timing is absolutely awful," she announced. "Whenever I come in here to see their new orders, they're snogging merrily away behind the counter, and neither hell nor high water will divert them. And I never think to bring a camera and sell the pictures." She turned to face out the window, eyes narrowing into slits. "For God's sake, they should either buy Yugi a chastity belt or sell the store, because – "

She was cut off by the sound of the glass case slamming open. Spinning around, she was confronted with Bakura bowing mockingly and motioning towards the now-opened case. "Take what you will, they'll never notice," he suggested.

Anzu put her hands on her hips and glowered at him. "I will _not_ sink to your level, so unless you're going to steal something yourself, you lock that case right back up before I slap you."

Bakura raised his eyebrows. "As you wish." He immediately began picking through the cards and slipping them into his pockets and up his sleeves.

Anzu watched him irritably for a minute, then stalked over, elbowed him aside, and snatched up five of the remaining cards. "You mug me for these once I've paid and you're going to be down about twenty teeth," she told him.

Bakura blinked at her. "Is it that time of month again?"

The brunette considered doing some untrained dental work anyway. "You'd have been unconscious in an alley already if it was. Just because I work with fairy cards and have friends doesn't make me all nice and cheery all the time. Maybe you should get past the idea that every duelist has to reflect their cards, too."

Bakura considered this. "Nah." With that, he pulled out his lockpicks again and went to work on the next case over.

Anzu glared at him helplessly for a minute, realized that trying to get him to overcome his kleptomania was a hopeless cause, and walked purposefully over to the counter. She picked up a stapler, hefted it thoughtfully in one hand, then leaned over and dropped it onto the writhing pair.

As Bakura flicked another case open and began helping himself to the contents, Yugi rose to his feet groggily and said, "I think I got a staple in my skull."

"Oh poor you," Anzu said briskly with no sympathy whatsoever. "Ring these up before you get seduced again," she said, poking the cards with one finger.

Yugi turned a very becoming shade of magenta, muttered something unintelligible, and began punching keys on the cash register. Yami wobbled to his feet also, looked over at Bakura, and howled, "Tomb robber!"

Bakura shoved one last card up his sleeve and clasped his hands together over his heart, staring with limpid eyes at Yami. "I was trying to reform," he said in an innocent voice. "It was all in service to the lady," he added, looking at Anzu.

"Oh, shut up," Anzu retorted, pocketing her purchases. "I am not your excuse for thievery."

"Oh, right, my obsession for pretty things and Duel Monsters is. How could I be so stupid?" Bakura asked sardonically, smacking himself on the forehead. "And your obsession with obtaining my hikari brought me here, so you'd still have all your merchandise if you hadn't orchestrated his kidnapping. Now where is he?"

"How should I know?" Yami demanded. "I sent Seto Kaiba along to Ryou with the cards to distract the two of you from tearing each others' throats out. I know very well that kidnapping one's hikari is one of the most incendiary acts that a person can perform, and I was trying to _avoid_ such an altercation," he spat, wrapping an arm around Yugi's shoulders. "I am not that stupid, contrary to your beliefs."

Bakura thought it over. Yami did, unfortunately, have a very good point. "Then why," he began plaintively, "did some pampered rich boy who hasn't seen him in years randomly kidnap him?"

"You're asking me?" Yami retorted. "I don't know! I don't _want_ to know!"

"I assume you want to know, though," Anzu said to Bakura. "Want a lift?"

Everyone stared at her.

"I may be bitchy but I'm not cold-hearted," Anzu informed the other three. "And I have a car. Do you want a lift to wherever you're going or not?"

Bakura shrugged. "Will it kill me?"

"Only if you strangle yourself with the seatbelt or make me crash," Anzu retorted, pulling her car keys out of her purse and heading for the door. "Coming?"

Bakura swiped another handful of cards on the way out, then jumped into the passenger's side. "Floor it."

"Yeah, yeah, you're in a rush," Anzu said, firing up the car.

"Well, yes, and there's also the fact that Yami is chasing after us and foaming at the mouth," Bakura said, turning in his seat to look out the back window.

"Why?" Anzu inquired.

Bakura held the handful of cards he'd snatched under her nose. "I think it had something to do with these."

Anzu rolled her eyes. "You're so perceptive. Sit still and stop hitting the mirror," she ordered, readjusting the driver's mirror for the third time after Bakura bashed into it once more. "Where are we going?"

"Seto Kaiba's mansions," Bakura said grimly. "Ryou said I should show up later, and I think I've waited long enough. It's not like I'm patient. Can this thing go any faster?"

* * *

"My God, niisama, you just randomly dragged him out of his home because he had a bunch of bruises on his face?" Mokuba demanded wearily.

"His darker was trying to strangle him!"

"Niisama, I've spent a lot of time with that tomb robber. He's volatile, he thinks in slightly different patterns than sane people, he's got an awful accent and doesn't understand Japanese half the time, but he's pretty protective of his other half. Or do you _not_ notice all the times he takes hits over his other half's injuries?" Mokuba pointed out.

"...no?" Seto said truthfully.

Sighing, Mokuba proclaimed, "You are hopeless. I spend a lot of time in that game shop, so I know these two. They're not so crazy. They both tend to be a little violent and a _lot_ narcissistic, but it's a trait that everyone with the jewelry shares."

"So he's not in trouble," Seto began.

"Mmm...no," Mokuba replied.

"But we are."

"Erm. Yes," Mokuba sighed and touched his forehead to Seto's. "We're gonna die."

"Should we double the guards?" Seto asked hopefully.

"They'll just get killed," Mokuba said with certainty. "You've seen these people in action."

"We're not dueling with them!" Seto protested.

"I somehow don't think that matters," Mokuba replied.

"...oh crap." Seto sighed. He was quiet for a moment, then brightened. "Wait a second!"

"You had the idea too?" Mokuba asked.

"Maybe. Was your idea to wait for the other to show up, then see how long we can get them to stay so we can analyze them?" Seto's eyes began to gleam. "If they can do all those things without being in a duel, then this is power that can be harnessed. We don't need those microchips anymore!"

Mokuba's eyes narrowed. "Niisama...er...my idea was to shove Bakura-san out into the driveway, lock the door, and pray that his darker half doesn't take revenge."

"But we have them here!" Seto said excitedly. "We can't just let them go!"

"How the hell do you plan to keep them here?" Mokuba demanded.

Seto shrugged. "I don't know. Pay off his parents?"

"He lives alone," Mokuba said. "That's right out."

"That's excellent!" Seto continued, sitting up. "Perfect! He can't possibly own that house. He only transferred here a few years ago! I'm going to go call Domino Realtors." With that, he took off out of the back door.

Mokuba stared after him with a doom-laden expression. "Oh, Lord. This is going to get _messy_."

"Messy? What messy?" Seto replied, whipping back into the room. "This is going to be _great!"_ He took a deep breath, then went over to the door that led back to Ryou. "You should probably go warn Moni. Ja!"

Mokuba glared uselessly at the closing door. "_You suck!"_

Somehow, that didn't relieve his feelings in the slightest.

* * *

**Bakura-luva-- **Must...wash...eyes...faints

**molten-amber--** j00 like?! Whee! Sparkly Magenta Fluffilicious Sesshy-sama-esque Tail Huggles for oo!

**KeMu-- **pats Mokuba on the head and runs quickly in the opposite direction

**otakusoei--** He's the ultimate evil?

**Ice Puppet-- **I like Ryou being eeeeeevil.

**Gyakutenno Megami--** We live in feeeeeeeear. Mwahaha.

**BlackRose-- **Angst/Comedy is our special genre!

**R Amethyst--** Er? blink Oh well! But what's wrong with being hyper...?

**CharcoalCat--** Yay! We made someone happy.

**Saturn Imp--** I'm getting there...I think?

**Liviana-- **OO eep.

Duel: brings forth her Review weaponry and sets out to conquer the Digital World When I'm done there, I'll go after you unless you give us comments...we feed on comments...we grooooooooww....giggles maniacally


	4. In Which Seto Is In Much Pain

Fate: FREE TIME!!! Two updates relatively close together! I'm on a roll! maniacal laughter

Disclaimer: chases random lawyers and hits them with her clipboard Shoo! Go'way! Get thee hence!

* * *

**::chapter four::**

"You know, I asked you to go fast and all, but something tells me that we're going _too_ fast," Bakura remarked as he and Anzu blazed down a side street.

"There hasn't been a speed limit sign yet," Anzu replied primly.

"I was thinking more along the lines of the thing chasing us with the shiny lights," Bakura pointed out.

Anzu glanced in the rearview mirror at the police car. "Shit."

"Is this going to delay us?" Bakura demanded.

"Yeah," Anzu said with a sigh.

"Then don't worry about it," Bakura said with a demonic grin. He twisted in his seat and leaned out the window, eyes sparkling. Anzu rolled her eyes and ignored him as well as any girl could expect to ignore a very easy-on-the-eyes undead maniacal teenaged boy.

There was a muted yell from the police car, a deranged laugh from her passenger, a bright gold flash, and the sound of plastic clinking against plastic. Bakura flopped back into his seat and rolled the window back up, propping his feet back up on the dash once more. "Ryou is going to kill me," he mused after a few seconds of silence.

"Why?" Anzu asked, accelerating tentatively. The police car didn't chase her--or even have any occupants anymore--so she stomped on the gas.

Bakura held up two Monster World dolls between his fingers.

"He told me that the next time I offed a police-person, I had to make them into cards, because some of his Monster World dolls kept trying to arrest some of the other ones. He doesn't think that cards will be as violent. _I_ keep telling him to stop playing Monster World in the Shadow Realm, but he's so damn good that it gets boring any other way, according to him."

"Ah. Thank you for taking care of them," Anzu said, nodding.

Bakura looked at her suspiciously. "You're not spazzing. You're not hitting me with your purse and telling me to send them back. What the hell?"

"Two things. One, Ryou is my friend, although a bit of a creepy one, and I don't like the idea of him being loose with Seto Kaiba, who's even worse. Believe it or not, I want to help you, and that means putting up with you." Anzu shot him a sideways glance. "The other thing was that I didn't want another speeding ticket."

Bakura thought about this. It seemed reasonable enough. "Okay," he said. "Just wanted to make sure you weren't going to murder me as soon as you stopped driving."

"I thought you were already dead," Anzu pointed out. "And Ryou's going to kill you again anyway, as you said."

"There is that," Bakura agreed, and set one of the Monster World dolls on the dashboard next to his feet. He started spinning the other one between his fingers idly as Anzu spun the car to the right, careening through an intersection and onto a much smaller road.

"We're almost there," she pointed out.

"How do you know where you're going, anyway?" Bakura asked, finally fulfilling his curiosity.

Anzu blushed. "I have gone to his home countless times to drag away a comatose Jounouchi who mixed it up with your prey, or to bring back our favorite shopkeepers after a night of games, drink, and rock and roll. And then there's been the crack-of-dawn house calls in which I hammer on the door for ten minutes and scream at whoever answers the door to give me Seto Kaiba so I can stomp on his conscience with hobnailed boots every time he does something mean to one of my friends. I come here a lot, actually," she said speculatively.

Bakura blinked. "So my arriving and reaming him out may be fairly well received?"

"Perhaps," Anzu said with a shrug. "You never really know, do you?" she concluded as she braked just shy of where the pavement ended and the gravel began.

"No," Bakura said introspectively. "You never really do." He carefully set the other Monster World doll next to its counterpart, then climbed out of the car window after a few seconds of futile attacking the door latch.

"The door was locked," Anzu told him. "You flick that switch to open it. Just for future reference, you know."

Bakura glowered at the door for a few minutes, then looked up at the girl. "Keep the Monster World dolls." With that, he turned on his heel and took off around the perimeter of the fence.

Anzu rolled her eyes, then yelled out the window, "You're welcome!" Following that, she executed a near-perfect three-point-turn and roared off down the road, her eyes slanting over to the two plastic dolls sitting harmlessly on her dashboard every so often. Finally she smiled, shook her head, and gently turned the car down a different road home.

Just in case.

* * *

"Bakura-san?" Seto began.

Ryou blinked, gasped, and scrambled gracelessly to his feet. "What?"

"I think...I think that you should know more about the impetuousness that drove us to this situation," Seto said, hesitating slightly over the words.

"That would be kind of you, Kaiba-sama," Ryou said, mocking struggling to reassert itself in his voice.

"You are here through a misunderstanding," Seto said with a vague smile. "However, I should like for this to turn into an excellent opportunity for me to work with you and your other half to figure out just how...things work. You will be compensated, I assure you."

Ryou blinked, mentally sorting through Seto's lyrical turn of phrase. He blinked again and his eyes narrowed as he glowered up at Seto. "Oh. So I'm your precious little guinea pig, the perfect experiment because I have no backbone and no will to resist?" Ryou began, his voice deceptively soft and lilting.

"You are slightly mistaken," Seto replied. "I told you in the car that there were a few things I did not wish to discuss regarding my...reaction," Seto said. "I've told you all I wish to tell you, and I think that complicating the matter further would be a mistake."

"Oh, really?" Ryou snarled.

Seto's eyes widened infinitesimally at hearing Ryou do something as violent as snarl. Despite the car ride, his ideas of what Ryou was like was still firmly entrenched in the 'wimpy, abused, femmy-boy' area. "Yes," he said simply.

Ryou took two steps forward, grabbed Seto's shirt by the collar, and pulled him down so that the two were face to face. "No more bullshit, Kaiba-sama, and no more pretty words. I'm not a politician or a rivaling business company to be lulled to your whims and lured to your side by your veiled commands. Now you tell me why you brought me here and no more of this 'concern for my safety'. It's about you, isn't it? It's all about you. You don't give a damn about me! You just want us here for you to throw into a cage and poke at, to make us squirm or scream. You're making us your pet Jekyll and Hyde!" Ryou spat into his face, dark eyes furious and empty as one. "You have no right to do this to me, and I _demand_ that you face your own damn demons as to why you spirited me away before you came up with _this_ brilliant idea!" Ryou's voice dropped to a whisper as he added, "Or you'll have my own personal one to deal with as well."

Seto angrily shrugged him loose and stepped back, gazing coldly at Ryou. The boy was completely devoid of color in his ire. What little color that had been in his face had vanished, his lips were pressed together into whiteness, and his eyes had darkened to snapping black.

_You're beautiful when you're angry..._

_Where the FUCK did that come from?!_ Seto thought wildly in response to the words passing unbidden through his mind. It sounded like a quote or a snatch of a song, but he couldn't place it...

And, of course, it was also very true.

"Don't threaten me," Seto snapped, his temper completely snapping. "Don't even bother trying. You couldn't lay a finger on me if you tried. I could break you in half with a look," he sneered, turning his back swiftly on the seething creature pressed against the wall.

The only warning Seto had was the whisper of cloth as Ryou leaped at him, knocked him to the floor, and launched a quick left to his jaw. This spawned more than a short time of near-senselessness as he tried to cope with the pain lancing through him. _Holy...fucking...SHIT!_ he thought, even his thoughts coming in quick gasps.

"That's what they all say," Ryou hissed, and Seto realized he'd spoken aloud. "That is _exactly_ what they all say, right after, 'Oh, you poor thing, how can you live like that?' Is it everyone's goddamn life campaign to humiliate and subdue me? _Is it?"_ Ryou screamed at him.

"I don't know, but I don't think I could humiliate or subdue you if I tried," said a small voice from the direction of the staircase.

Ryou's head whipped around as Seto closed his eyes, feeling his face burn.

"M...Mokuba-san..." Ryou whispered, horror keeping his voice soft. He then leapt off of Seto and fled away down the hall.

"Niisama!" Mokuba exclaimed. Seto found himself being helped to his feet and then summarily shoved into a chair. "Sit. Do you know your name?"

"Of course I do," Seto snapped, pain making him even more brusque. "Stop fluttering, kid."

"Stop being such a damn brat!" Mokuba retorted. "It's your own damn fault you got hit like that!" As Seto's vision began to clear, he saw two fuzzy versions of his younger brother swiping angrily at his eyes, sniffling, then glaring fiercely at him once more. "For once you brought it on yourself!"

"I understand, but what would you have me do?" Seto demanded bitterly.

Mokuba's shoulders slumped. "I apologize, niisama. You must have a headache and I'm yelling at you. I'm going outside." He flashed Seto a quick smile and left the room with practiced swiftness.

Seto rubbed his jaw, blinked ferociously for a few moments while the number of objects in the room dwindled to their normal amount, and then wobbled to his feet. After a few more minutes of careful reorientation — better to take the time while he had it rather than to wait and be worse off — he started out of the room, praying he wouldn't run into Ryou.

At least it was only Ryou he had to worry about, and not his yami...

* * *

Bakura glowered up at the gate. His climbing skills were none too great for the simple reason that there was little to climb in a tomb robber's life. He had briefly considered simply going in to join Ryou, then discarded the idea on the principle that he didn't want Ryou to get any angrier than he was. Ryou hadn't said anything, but he was so obviously furious that Bakura felt it quite strongly. It was only serving to fuel his own ire, anyway.

With a reluctant sigh, he removed his shoes, threw them over the top, and began hauling himself up the side of the gate.

Most of the spikes on the top were bent or had been carelessly twisted off somehow. Bakura paused there, perched between spikes on the top of the gate, panting. It wasn't that he wasn't in shape so much as it was the, uh, the new muscles he was using.

Right?

Right.

"Oh my God," someone blurted out from the ground.

Bakura made a strangled squeaky noise and promptly fell over the side of the fence. He landed catlike — one of the few things about climbing that he _did_ do well — and found himself nearly nose-to-nose with someone's shoes. He shakily straightened up to face the person.

They were about an inch shorter than he was, with gray-blue eyes and ratty black hair hanging in looping, tangled tendrils to his waist.

"Oh. You're _not_ Ryou," the boy stated dumbly.

Bakura rolled his eyes. "Obviously." It actually wasn't always that obvious, but that little fact was forgotten in order to show up the astonished boy.

"Then you must be...the other one," the boy said slowly, his eyes narrowing. "Damn. Niisama is going to be _pissed._ Well, even more than he is already," he said speculatively. "If you're here to kidnap me, I'm going to shoot you. We clear?"

"Your older brother?" Bakura asked.

"I think you're looking for him," the boy said dryly. "Kaiba Seto. Ring a bell?"

"He kidnapped my hikari," Bakura growled.

"I'd noticed," the boy retorted. "Your other half is currently raising more than a little hell, by the way."

"I'm not surprised," Bakura said honestly. "Take me to your brother," he commanded.

The boy shrugged. "All right, but if you think he'll be able to think at all clearly after the blows to the head that he took, then you're as delusional as all the rumors say."

"What blows to the head?" Bakura inquired.

The boy looked at him sideways as he turned to face the mansion. "The ones Ryou gave him."

"Let me guess...a left hook," Bakura surmised.

"That would be his favorite?" the boy inquired.

Bakura merely smiled and touched a jagged scar marking the time Ryou had gone after him with a set of brass knuckles stolen from his soul room. "You could put it that way."

"Coming, then?" the boy said with a sigh. "You know, just to make my life a total and utter hell on fucking earth and all."

Bakura turned as well. Of course, the pretty mansion promptly distracted him. "...hot damn," he finally managed, eyes bugging out of his head.

"You're drooling," the black-haired boy noted dispassionately.

"Shut up," Bakura snapped, and popped his jaw back into place. He blinked a couple times to return his eyes to their normal size, then scowled at the boy. "Aren't you...?"

"Kaiba Mokuba," the boy said simply as he started towards the front door. "Shouldn't you know that?"

"Oh, right. Bait boy. Can I go tear your brother apart now?" Bakura demanded.

Mokuba hesitated for a brief moment at the foot of the steps, then took them two at a time, a slight smile appearing on his face. His eyes were hidden by his hair as he pushed open the door and said, "Welcome to our mansion."

Bakura pushed past him and stormed into the foyer, wrenching out the Ring and commanding it to take him to Ryou. As his footsteps faded away down the hall, Mokuba let the door fall shut. He stood there in silence, breathing deeply for a minute, then ripped his gun out of his jeans, flicked the safety off, and emptied the clip into the door.

The first alarmed guard found him still standing there, eyes glazed and hands shaking in fury.

"Mokuba-sama, I really don't want to make an enemy of you," she said, gaping.

"Good," Mokuba said shakily. "Want to call the repairman for me?"

"Yessir!" The guard snapped a salute, then retired to make a watchful phone call on her cell.

Mokuba stared at the destroyed door, then shoved his gun away and ran into the house without another word.

Poor kid.

* * *

Fate: pats Mokuba on the head Aww.

**Kitten-- **Mmmm, dark.

**Saturn Imp-- **But half the fun is taunting Yami about it!

**Bakuraluva-- **squish Plothole. Go with it.

**Liviana-- **A-fscking-men to that...

**higashikaze-- **Ack! Don't give him away!

**Yukoma-- **Aaagh...the pairing problems...the pairing problems...

**Ice Puppet-- **Otogi is fun. And Sensible!Anzu is equally entertaining.

**R Amethyst-- **Good okay, bad okay?

**SweetMisery-- **P-A-I-N. (i changed it, so this scene no longer exists. sorry)

Duel: grins maniacally and holds forth the Review Stick of Doom Bow before me and do as I bid thee! Review or all will be lost!


	5. In Which Mokuba Is Highly Annoyed

Fate: Here we go with my first update after NaNoWriMo! Thanks for being so understanding, everyone!

Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh does not belong to Fate. It will never belong to Fate. Mwahahaha...

* * *

**::chapter five::**

Ryou pressed himself back into the closet, his breath coming in short, horrified gasps. His fingers were knotted over his mouth and his eyes were painfully wide and scared. His hair had fallen loose from its careful styling during his blind flight from the main lobby of the mansion and was pooling haphazardly over his shoulders and down his back. _Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod what have I done? I've never...I've...ohmygod..._ He whimpered incoherently and curled more tightly into the corner of the dark aperture. _I'm going to get arrested. I'm going to get killed!_

In the silence that fell around him, Ryou distantly heard a door slam, then an angry snarl.

_I'm dead,_ Ryou decided.

The doorknob rattled on the closet. Ryou promptly huddled in on himself and willed himself to vanish. _If I really get in trouble, I'm running for my soul room,_ he swore.

The doorknob stopped rattling. Instead, someone kicked the door. Ryou promptly stopped breathing.

"Goddamnit!" said a very familiar voice. "Why the hell did you lock that fucking door?"

"Yami?" Ryou whispered.

There was a sudden blur, a ghosting dark sensation behind his eyes, and suddenly his yami was standing in front of him, scowling down at him. "What are you doing in _here_?"

"Ohmygod!" Ryou blurted, jumping at his yami and knocking the both of them into the door. "I beat up Seto Kaiba and he's going to kill me can we please get out of here without you killing anyone please?" he asked, clinging uselessly to his yami's neck.

"Can you please give me some air please?" his yami mimicked, prying him off. He opened the door to the closet and pulled his unresisting hikari into the hallway.

"All right," Ryou said, a smirk growing across his face, his fingers twining together behind Bakura's neck. "You've had enough air, especially for a dead guy."

"Who're you calling – oh..."

Ryou smirked and licked his lips. "Oh?"

"You're such a necrophiliac," Bakura murmured.

"And you're such a narcissist," Ryou replied, allowing himself to be pushed up against the wall. "How did this argument start?"

"You go to clubs too much," Bakura said sulkily.

"Mmm. But then, I'd never know to do this..." Ryou breathed against his mouth, then ran his tongue over his teeth.

"And what's 'this'?" Bakura inquired.

Ryou stuck out his tongue. "Beg me."

The smirk intensified on Bakura's face. "Ooh."

"Wha – st-stop that!" Ryou squeaked.

"Do you really want me to?" Bakura whispered.

"...no..."

"Good."

Ryou's eyes darkened as he put two fingers under Bakura's chin and gently lifted his face to be on a level with his own. "And, pray tell, what part of 'stop smirking and kiss me' did you not get? Because I found it very straightforward. And no, you're not getting sidetracked with your little vampire fetish," Ryou said.

"Whose fetish is it, really? Yours or mine?" Bakura taunted.

"_You_ get off on it," Ryou observed.

"All this time we've been talking, and we're getting nowhere," Bakura replied. "I vote less talk, more yami gratification."

"Bastard," Ryou repeated, licking the pulse on Bakura's neck and lowering his eyelids. "Beg me."

Bakura promptly pushed Ryou's face back up. "I have no shame in front of you," he replied. "Now how about that yami gratification?"

"Mmm." Ryou felt himself shoved into a wall with almost inhuman force, with teeth on his lips and across his jawbone and a fast bite to his neck before traveling back up and staying...

/This counts as hikari gratification too, you know.../ he said giddily.

Icy hands with sharpened nails trailed under his shirt. ::And this? Oooh, melted hikari...::

/You are a bastard./

::So I've heard,:: Bakura replied idly, allowing Ryou to break away for air. ::Silly mortals, needing to breathe and all.::

/It's only ritualistic,/ Ryou said languidly, looking at him from darkened eyes. /Want more of that yami gratification?/

"Excuse me," said a voice clearly from the end of the hallway. "Just one thing before you two go back into your little land of the love-fests. And before I go claw my eyes out."

"Oh damn," Ryou blurted. "Mokuba-san."

"Has the concept of 'get a room' escaped you, or is it the Egyptian thing that makes you two so wantonly randy?" Mokuba asked acidly. "Don't answer that. Just...do you want to be here?"

"What the fuck?" Ryou asked. "No offense, but, uh, no. And the bruise thing? Those would be my yami overreacting in self-defense, after which there was a good deal of makeup sex."

"Oh good, you're psychic. And you like to give out too much information about your sex life. So why the hell are you here?" Mokuba asked levelly.

"Your brother kidnapped me," Ryou answered, straightening up as his yami slunk off to one side. /Don't ditch me now,/ he hissed.

::What do I look like?:: Bakura demanded hotly.

/Someone who's about to quietly vanish,/ Ryou retorted, twining his fingers through one of Bakura's hands.

"My brilliant idea was, when Seto realized how capable you were of defending yourself, was to dump you in the driveway and wait for your other half to show up," Mokuba explained. "His was to make you two very gently kept lab animals."

"Oh, right, he mentioned that," Ryou said. "That was right before I punched him. Sorry about that!"

"And how's he going to do that?" Bakura chipped in. "There isn't a jail in the world that'll hold _me._"

Mokuba looked at the partially entwined pair with empty eyes. "Niisama is good at a lot of things."

"Is he now?" Bakura asked. "Well, so am I. We'll be going then."

"I wanted to warn you..." Mokuba trailed off, then his eyes fixed on a point behind the both of them. "Well, never mind me. Hello, niisama. I've just been talking to your lab rats."

"What--oh. Shit. Well...shit," Bakura said, looking over his shoulder as Ryou stared intently at Mokuba. "Don't look at me like that, I don't beat him up," he snapped at Seto. "You people are such alarmists."

"Oh, I could care less what you do to each other, so long as it's a fair fight," Seto said levelly. "And you're not my lab rats. Mokuba just likes being manipulative."

"Sure we're not," Ryou said. "So we can just leave then, since it's all one big misunderstanding?"

"Niisama..." Mokuba said warningly. "He decked you once. He'll do it again. I can see it coming a mile off. Maybe you should apologize this time and let them walk away quietly."

Ryou watched, fascinated, as Mokuba and Seto's eyes locked. Mokuba looked away first and studied the immaculate floor intently.

"I will not apologize for_ then_, as I have done no wrong in my eyes," Seto said carefully. "However, I do apologize for abruptly uprooting you," he added to Ryou. "I hope that we can reach some accommodation."

"The accommodation is me walking out the door," Ryou said challengingly, straightening and lifting his chin. Mokuba and Bakura both simultaneously recognized this as a warning sign. Mokuba backed up a few steps. Bakura smirked.

Seto was utterly clueless.

Seto is not a good people person.

"I don't think you understand," Seto said silkily. "You no longer have that freedom."

"What the hell?" Ryou demanded.

"How old are you?" Seto inquired.

Ryou glared at him. "Nineteen. Tack a few thousand onto his age," he added, nodding at Bakura.

"And who owns the house you live in?" Seto inquired.

"My father," Ryou said. "He's away on business."

"Do you know which company leased it to him? And if you're done with mortgage payments?" Seto inquired.

Ryou stiffened. "You wouldn't possibly – "

"So you do know," Seto said softly.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ryou replied.

"I own Domino Real Estate," Seto said, folding his arms across his chest and taking a few steps forwards. "And since you're a fairly recent transfer student, I don't think your father has quite finished paying off that house. And since he's not here...it falls to you to take care of it, yes?"

"No," Ryou said stubbornly. "It doesn't. You can reach him. Anyone can."

"Except you," Seto pointed out.

"I can reach him easiest of anyone!" Ryou burst out.

"Not if I don't let you. You don't have a cell phone on you."

Ryou stared at him. "You really have kidnapped me."

"It's not abduction if you agree to stay," Seto said coolly before Ryou could move. "I'm not threatening you. I'm only stating a fact. It's a fact that when he leaves, he will find some complications with his place of residence. If you stay here, however, you will have a place to live, all the conveniences. I just want to study you."

"Oh, god," Ryou muttered, putting one hand to his forehead. "I feel like I've been abducted by bureaucratic aliens."

"Aliens? Hey, aren't aliens famous for these probe things that – " Bakura began, finally looking interested.

"_Yamiii!"_ Ryou wailed, stepping hard on his foot.

"Ow!"

Mokuba burst out laughing. "Ne, niisama, I'm beginning to support keeping them around. We could use some comic relief around here."

"Hey! You're supposed to be on our side!" Bakura complained.

Mokuba pointed to himself. "Me?"

"You!"

Mokuba raised one eyebrow. "I'm _his_ brother. Oh, and niisama, tack on another hundred dollars or so for a new door onto our monthly reconstruction bill."

"What did they _do?_" Seto groaned.

"Well, erm, there was this altercation, and some bullets, and, um, our head guard is taking care of it?" Mokuba suggested.

"You did _not_ shoot up the door for no reason," Seto said. Mokuba simply stood there and radiated innocence. Seto stared at him, then took two steps forward and pulled a gun from Mokuba's jeans. "Empty," he said, looking at the gun with raised eyebrows. "Safety still off. Tsk," he added.

"There was a reason," Mokuba protested.

"Was it a good one?" Seto asked.

"Well, I wanted revenge for being kidnapped, only if I shot _him,_ there would be a lot of anger. And I don't think it'd kill him, either. So I drilled the shit out of the door," Mokuba fabricated on the spot.

Seto made an inarticulate noise of frustration and strode from the hallway, slamming into the elevator and hammering on the buttons until the door closed.

"Well, that got rid of him," Mokuba commented. "Except he kind of took my gun. Whoa!" he added when he beheld the state Ryou and Bakura were in. "I'll...be going somewhere else now. Away. Yeah. Goodbye," he said hurriedly, and fled the hallway before his innocent eyes could be even more jaded. That, or before a crush he had been quietly stuffing away for a very long time flared up again.

Oops. Too late.

And no, we're not talking about the jading.

* * *

Fate: Well. Ehheh. Chaos...and some random fluff in the beginning. If you can call that fluff.

**Liviania**-- Left hook...yes...

**DreamingChild**-- Welcome to review-land! Honored to have your first review. ;;

**Saturn Imp**-- Oh yes. Oh gods yes.

**TeeDee**-- I have a big book of all sorts of variations on that song. Priceless, that book.

**SweetMisery**-- Happy with this chapter? smirks

**Ramythest**-- Yay Ryou!

**Nadako**-**Mika**-- Tra la la tweet tweet? runs

**lin**-- Glad you like!

**Hiso**-**chan**-- By the way, thanks for multiple reviews...

**Yukoma**-- Wai! Someone loves him! And cookies!

**Ice** **Puppet**-- Thankoos!

**gothic****christian**-- Me? Plot that makes sense? Hwvaaah? What're you on?

Duel: brings forth the Sharp Pointy Review Stick of Doom blows dust off it Live in fear, mortals. I have returned. AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!


	6. In Which Ryou And Bakura Shop Online

Fate: Bwaa. Here it be. I love this story.

Disclaimer: Much though Fate desires to own the characters, she never will. Now read. READ!

* * *

**::chapter six::**

"So you've moved in, have you."

"You say that as though we had a choice in the matter," Ryou said from his position of lying upside down on the bed. His hair was pooled on the floor as he stared somewhat blearily at Mokuba. "'Moved in' is a relative term, too. Your brother won't let us out to get our stuff. Yami's sulking."

"That's what I'm here to talk to you about," Mokuba informed him, leaning on the doorframe. "Niisama told me to treat you like we would any guests in your situation. You're supposed to be choosing to stay with us in order to prevent...living difficulties."

"So your brother's going to try and analyze us, eh?" Ryou asked, ignoring the previous topic. "And how's he going to do that?"

"You ask as though I knew what was going on," Mokuba retorted. "He kidnapped you, blackmailed you into staying, and is now using you for scientific experiments. I don't know what the hell is going on here."

Ryou examined his nails. "Not having my stuff isn't much of a loss. We sold most of it when we moved here, and since Father's been away so much I haven't bought much more. That, and I spent most of my money on things like Duel Monsters," he added with an upside-down grin. "Besides...with a yami, material things are...well, they aren't so useful. Or needed."

"Where _is_ your yami?" Mokuba asked, stepping inside and closing the door after him. "Oh, and here," he added, holding out a credit card. "Spend whatever you like. Niisama's counting this a business expense. You can have whatever you want. You just can't leave." Mokuba shook his head. "This is really ridiculous. We should just pay you to show up a couple times a week or so."

"Your brother's wanted to get a hold of one of us for a while now, hasn't he. Someone who isn't afraid to hurt or kill. Someone who wouldn't be missed." Ryou began tapping his fingers together under his chin idly. "I can vaguely see what he was getting at. But why keep me?"

"Maybe he just wants to," Mokuba said softly.

"Maybe," Ryou agreed, flipping right side up and sliding to the floor. "Come here," he said, beckoning the dark-haired boy closer. "I want to talk to you without you staring at me like that."

Mokuba hesitantly crossed the room and sat next to Ryou. "Yeah?"

Ryou suddenly grabbed the younger boy's chin and stared into his eyes. A dark smile spread across his face as his eyes flashed red. "You'll do," he purred. "You'll do nicely."

Mokuba jerked back out of the paler boy's hold. "Are you...are you still Ryou?"

Ryou grinned. "He's in here," he said, tapping his temple with one forefinger. "You didn't know? I said he was off sulking."

Mokuba blinked. "That's...very strange."

Ryou just looked angelic. "You get used to it."

"I suppose I'll have to, if you're going to be living here," Mokuba muttered.

"Mmm," Ryou said. "Hey, this credit card is practically unlimited?"

"Yes," Mokuba said warily, handing it over.

"Oooh. I get new clothes!" Ryou said. His eyes went unfocused for a bit, then he grinned. "Yami has some very naughty suggestions."

Mokuba blinked. "Ah."

"Sorry," Ryou said. "You probably didn't want to know that."

"I don't mind. At least I didn't walk in on you foffing," Mokuba said. "I've seen my brother in disturbing enough positions that I think I'm immune for life."

Ryou's eyes squicked into funny shapes. "I...see."

Mokuba smiled. "Now we're even."

"So we are," Ryou acquiesced. "And for the record, I didn't want to know that."

"So what you _do _want is naughty clothing sites?" Mokuba asked, getting up and crossing to the computer.

"I don't know any," Ryou said, although it sounded more like he was talking to someone else.

"I do," Mokuba replied.

"Eh?" Ryou blinked. "That's...uh...what do you...I don't want you to answer that."

"Niisama," Mokuba said simply. "Oh, and I'm figuring that the more you scare him, the faster he'll let you go."

"So I should walk around wearing only a fishnet shirt and assless leather chaps?" Ryou inquired.

"That might not have the desired effect," Mokuba said carefully. "But it'll definitely get you laid."

"Damn straight it will," someone else said. Mokuba turned and looked at Bakura, who was now holding Ryou from behind with his chin resting on Ryou's hair. "Are there any websites for _that_? We're stealing from them. Or buying. Whatever."

"Aren't we supposed to be fighting?" Ryou inquired.

"Fuck that," Bakura replied.

"If you're going to snog, be reasonably quiet for a bit?" Mokuba pleaded. He attributed the twisty feelings in his stomach to dread at being enclosed in a room with a pair of necrophiliac narcissists. Horny ones at that.

"Mmmph? Oh. Sorry," Ryou said. "Yami. Off."

"Why?"

"So we can buy clothes," Ryou said patiently. "You know. The stuff we wear on a day-to-day basis? If we're going to have to stay here, I vote we make the most of an unlimited credit card."

"I'm better than any unlimited credit card," Bakura sulked.

"Yes, but you don't screw up anyone's credit ratings in the process," Ryou retorted. "That's the really fun bit."

"Here you are," Mokuba announced, swinging back from the desk. "Knock yourself out."

"Nah, you help," Ryou said, grabbing his arm. "You'll know what will unduly turn your brother on. We want to avoid that."

"What about me?" Bakura murmured.

"_Everything_ turns you on."

"Shut up, bastard."

Mokuba watched this back-and-forth banter with no small amount of fascination. "Right. What do you want my help with?"

"Oh, I don't know," Ryou said, turning to look at the computer screen. "Holy mother of Ra!" he squeaked when he finally saw the title page. "I was _kidding_ when I mentioned the assless chaps!"

"Apparently these people aren't," Mokuba deadpanned.

Bakura leaned over him. "I want that, and that, and that," he said, pointing things out rapidly. "Oooh, and that one's shiny."

"Isn't it?" Ryou and Mokuba agreed in unison. Mokuba did some fast selection of the aforementioned clothes, then hit 'next'.

"So your brother wants to use me?" Bakura wondered. He flopped onto the office chair next to Mokuba and dragged Ryou onto his lap. "That's kind of...special. You know, I think I recognize that from the time I was tossed into the pharaoh's torture chamber," he added, poking at a very spiky-looking...er...object on the screen. "Apparently he had a side to him that I didn't know about."

"Moving on," Mokuba said hastily. "Do you need anything else?"

Ryou and Bakura stared at each other. "Clothes we have. Sort of. Room and board seem to be taken care of, as well as money. And Internet access. Uni's out for the summer. I have my deck in my soul room. Considering that freedom is right out, I can't think of anything," Ryou said thoughtfully.

"Weapons?" Bakura asked plaintively.

"What about that fucking arsenal you keep up there?" Ryou asked, kissing Bakura on the forehead.

"I meant aside from that."

"No," Ryou said sternly. "I said it was an arsenal, and I meant it. If we're talking about the arsenal of a medium-large, heavily armed country."

"So?"

Mokuba rolled his eyes. "If you're desperate, look around. Knock out a security guard or two. Steal stuff. Isn't that what you're good at?"

"He's got a point, you know," Bakura said thoughtfully.

Mokuba eased out of the chair, trying not to knock the others to the ground. "I'm going to go talk to niisama now," he announced.

"So, uh, when do we get these clothes?" Bakura asked.

"Later today or tomorrow sometime," Mokuba replied. "Those people are local and we can pay a lot for private messenger."

"You actually call those clothes?"

"Okay, okay, when do we get the fuck-suits? Happy now?"

"YAMI!"

"Is that a yes?"

Mokuba decided that this was an opportune moment to slip out the door.

"Well?"

Mokuba jumped about a foot. "Niisama!" he blurted, falling back against the door he'd just closed. "Where'd you come from?"

"I wanted to see where you'd put them," Seto said calmly. "A good idea, yours. Give them a wing to themselves so they can have time to calm down and feel like they're welcome here."

"You realize they're both regarding this as some kind of joke, right?" Mokuba asked. "What is going on here?"

Seto pressed a hand to his mouth briefly, then sighed. "What, should I throw them into the labs for a while?"

"They'll just go and have lots of wild crazy sex," Mokuba pointed out.

"True," Seto said.

They both paused for a moment to behold the visual. Mokuba blushed, whereas Seto simply rolled his eyes. "Lovely. I'm going to go down to the labs anyway. They need some cleaning, I'll bet."

"He knows how you look at him," Mokuba called after him. "The dark one. He knows what you're thinking. Chasing the light like a moth..."

"I'm not a fool," Seto said softly, stopping.

"I don't want you to get hurt," Mokuba told him quietly. "Be careful. Loving Doctor Jekyll means you're going to have to deal with Mr. Hyde, whether you like it or not."

"Wh-_what?!"_ Seto spluttered. "I...I do not...I am not...there's no...it's obvious that they...I...you..._gah!_" he finally said expressively.

Mokuba raised an eyebrow at this rare outburst. "If you were as bad as covering your ass with anyone else, you'd be an awful businessman."

Seto tried to glower at him, failed resoundingly, and settled for stalking magnificently away.

Mokuba burst into muffled laughter and turned back along the hallways, heading for his own quarters.

_So that's it,_ he thought triumphantly. _He started off the great rescuer, and wound up falling in love – well, okay, more like lust – with the victim-who-wasn't. And now he wants to seduce him, come hell or high water. God, Seto's so stupid sometimes...but this is a brilliant plan in some respects. I mean, Ryou won't look on him as a merciful rescuer, because this is no longer a rescue. And the whole lab rat thing? Decidedly kinky. It might actually have made them go for it. I really don't know how this will work out. One thing I do know, though. Nothing will split those two up. They're bonded for eternity and beyond._

Of course, a treacherous voice in his mind insisted on pointing out one other fact. _There is, of course, the fact that if they _are _going to be bonded for eternity, they might want a change of pace at some point or another..._

_No._

_Absolutely not._

Mokuba shook his head violently, then walked through the sliding doors into his main room. He stared at himself in the mirror, then crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at his disheveled reflection. "Bleh," he announced. "I'm going to sleep. Yes. Sleep."

He brushed a hand over his eyes and wandered away from the mirror, pacing into his bedroom and slamming the door. "Dammit!" he finally burst out, leaning on the door and sliding down to land on the ground. "Dammit," he repeated hopelessly. "Niisama's not the only one who's lusting for the impossible," he groaned. "But you can't love Mr. Hyde," he whispered. "Because he doesn't belong to anyone but Jekyll, and nothing will keep the two apart." He rolled over and stared at the ceiling. "DAMMIT!"

That would be the cue for his daily trip to the shooting range.

* * *

Fluffy: Hee. The plot coagulates.

**yukoma – **Well, now you can do NaNoWriMo next year!

**Liviana –** Everyone ignores Mokuba. It makes me sad.

**DreamingChild – **Your HOWMANYTH review?! OO

**SweetMisery – **I attribute it to the promise of Ryou in slutty outfits if they stay.

**ElleFaTe2x1 – **Sankyuu! Sorry this took so long to update.

**IcePuppet – **Hee hee hee.

**Psychopathic Sixth Grader – **Sorry for the late update! ;;

**RunningInCircles – **Sankyuu muchly!

Duel: Hear me, Zion! ! Yeah. Um. Screw the premise, REVIEW! And BURN! Wahahahahahaaaaaa!


	7. In Which Ryou Is Thoroughly Snogged

Fate: Hee. Hee hee hee. I've been wanting to write this chapter for a while.

Disclaimer: It ain't ours. Shouldn't you have figured that one out by now?

* * *

**::chapter seven::**

"Oi!"

Mokuba turned around. "Y-yes?"

Bakura glared at him, hands on hips. "Where's my hikari? He won't answer me."

Mokuba shrugged. "How should I know?"

Bakura shifted to lean against the door, tapping one finger on the metal plate screwed into the middle. "Isn't this some kind of surveillance room?"

"You can read?" Mokuba asked, then mentally slapped himself for his idiocy.

Bakura's glare intensified. "Yes. Maybe. Sort of. That's beside the point!" he finally spat. "Those screens show everything, don't they?"

Mokuba mentally slapped himself again. "Right."

"So, look for him!" Bakura insisted.

"Why can't you?"

Bakura's glare returned with a vengeance. "Because he won't _let_ me."

"He has that much control?" Mokuba asked. "Can't you just...push him aside?"

Bakura's glare turned sulky. "...don'wanna."

"Why?" Mokuba asked, folding his arms. "You don't seem the type to not want to hurt your host."

"See, that's where you're all wrong!" Bakura exploded. "None of us wantonly hurt our hosts for the hell of it! We've all done some stupid shit, and that's all you can remember! Do I _look_ like a sado-masochist?"

Mokuba thought about it. "Yes."

Bakura spluttered incoherently for a few minutes, then glowered some more.

Mokuba examined his nails. "So did you want something?"

The door slammed.

Grey eyes stared at the inside of the door. _...wait a minute. That door was _so _locked._

_And if he can't read...has he been picking all the locks looking for his hikari?_

Mokuba jumped to his feet and yanked the door open.

The spirit totally ignored him, instead focusing on a whirling circle of gold with five points flaring off of it. The glow lent color to his bloodless face and turned his red eyes a muddy, ominous shade of vermilion.

"It's not working, is it?" Mokuba asked quietly.

"He's _somewhere_ around here," Bakura growled. "I'll _handle_ it."

Mokuba looked at all the doors hanging open. His had seemed to be one of the last ones Bakura had come to. "You really want help?"

"No," Bakura snapped.

Mokuba raised one eyebrow. "I'll start looking, then," he said, and turned back into the surveillance room. He then slammed and locked the door before Bakura could follow.

"Damn bad-tempered spirits," he muttered, resting his head in his hands briefly. He wheeled over to the main console and picked up the headset again. "Hey."

"Hel-_lo_," the computer replied. "Who was _that?"_

"No one you need to worry about," Mokuba said hastily. "I just need you to look for him, or his lookalike."

"And why's that?" the computer asked as she began scanning all the camera feeds.

"Because the fact that he doesn't want to be found worries me. Oh, and where's my brother?"

"That one's easy," the computer replied. "In his office, like always. I think he's got company, too – he turned the camera off."

Mokuba blinked. "Override that and turn the camera back on. Now."

"You sure?" the computer asked. "It might be a little scarring for you – "

"It'll be _physically_ scarring for _him_ if anything of the sort happens," Mokuba said hastily. "Turn the camera back _on!"_

"Can't, hon," the computer said after a moment. "Unless you know his password."

Mokuba's shoulders slumped. "Oh, never mind, I'll go up there myself. God, if anything happens, I'm moving to Aruba. Reserve me a plane ticket, will you?" he asked, throwing the headset down and storming out of the room.

"You," he said, pointing at Bakura. "Yeesh!" he added as a knife flew at where he'd been standing seconds before. "What the hell was that for?"

Bakura glared at the knife. "I need to redo the grip on that. What good's a knife if I keep losing it like that?"

Mokuba sweatdropped. "No comment there. Look, you pick locks, right?"

Bakura shrugged, picked up the knife, and went back to his contemplation of the Ring.

"I think I found Bakura-san," Mokuba said.

"Yeah, and?" Bakura asked.

"The reason that thing is spazzing out is because he's moving in a circle around us," Mokuba said patiently. "Seto's gotten paranoid, so his office slowly moves around so it's never in the same place twice, should he ever invite someone in. The crawl space to get in is underneath us, but it's locked. I don't have the key."

Bakura tilted his head one way, then the other. "Mortals," he finally said disdainfully.

"Look. Lock. Have fun," Mokuba said, pointing to the panel in the floor. "If Bakura-san – "

"Call him Ryou," Bakura said as he knelt, pulled a couple wires out of his sleeve, and set to work with a malicious grin. "I don't like getting confused."

"...if Ryou-san is, well, blocking you out, then I'm a little worried about...why," Mokuba finally said, sounding rather disoriented. "Why call him Ryou?"

"Because _I'm_ Bakura," Bakura said triumphantly. "That's what everyone calls me."

"It's his name too," Mokuba said.

"So? It's mine now." This was punctuated by the trap door slamming open.

"You're fast," Mokuba said.

Bakura shrugged. "Whatever." He then dropped down into the dark area and out of sight.

Mokuba waited a few seconds, then jumped after.

"Hang it, why are you coming?" Bakura hissed.

"Because I want to," Mokuba said mutinously.

Bakura rolled his eyes and stalked away into the darkness.

And walked straight into a wall.

"GOD-FUCKING-DAMMIT! WHO put that WALL there?!"

"....probably the same people that built the house. You know, people who weren't counting on homicidal tomb robbers storming off without looking."

"Shut up." Bakura tugged at the Ring. "Light. Find him."

* * *

"...you seem to have kidnapped me. Again."

"Yes, that's right. I get a kick out of it," Seto shot back.

Silence.

Seto, being generally unused to malicious dark spirits and the techniques that their modern halves had to develop in order to keep some semblance of order in their lives, did not realize that Silence Is A Bad Thing.

It usually means that whatever's happening, you aren't going to figure it out until too late.

Seto felt something tap his shoulder.

"What?" he snapped.

Tap. Tap.

"What _is_ it?" he demanded, finally spinning around.

And promptly confronted a floating, half-decayed fiend facing him.

Seto did not scream like a girl. Seto screamed like a teenager who has just come face-to-face with a partially decayed human form. Oddly enough, that's exactly what he was. Funny, that.

"Sorry, but the pharaoh's not the only one who has a bit of a nasty deck, as you should well know by now," Ryou said after Seto had subsided somewhat. "Oh, fine," he added. "Here!" he called, raising one hand. The fiend floated back to where he was lounging at the table and knelt by its master. Ryou grinned lovingly at it, stroked what was left of its hair, and then patted it on the head. "Thank you!" he said cheerily. The fiend then vanished into the Ring around his neck.

Seto mouthed ineffectually for a bit, then finally squeaked out, "Is...is...what the _hell_ was that?"

Ryou pouted. "I was feeling lazy."

Seto stared. "Never make that expression again?"

Ryou looked even sulkier. "Why?"

_Because it's so bloody snoggable, that's why..._ "Because that is possibly the most disturbing expression I have seen in my life," he said coolly. "Anyway. That was sort of why you're here. Do you want to replicate that?"

"Oh, toss off," Ryou said. "Look. No matter who you set on us, yami and Father will take care of it. Yami doesn't mind killing and you can't arrest a spirit...or someone who has a perfect alibi. This has been fun, but if you're not going to give me a really good reason to stay here, I'm leaving."

Seto tensed. "I'll pay you to stay here and work with me."

"Why me?" Ryou asked curiously. "Why not someone...normal? Like Yuugi?"

"Because they are normal. And they have scruples," Seto snapped. "That gold pendant is fascinatingly powerful, and I don't know the half of what it does. Also your holographic projector for that Earl of Demise, that was – "

"That wasn't a holographic projector," Ryou said with a small smile.

"Well, what was it?"

"The real Earl of Demise," Ryou said simply. "It's a trick yami taught me to keep from getting beat up so much. He was getting bored with wiping the pavement with bullies. When he gets bored, he tends to go overboard and start doing amateur autopsies...and sometimes he won't wait for them to die. So I figured a little harmless Shadow magic would be better than having him kill my friends."

Seto mouthed ineffectually some more. "I have to learn how to do that."

"You have a yami?" Ryou asked.

Seto blinked. "Of course not." _I...think...?_

"Then good luck to you, but I don't see it happening," Ryou said. "You used to be one of us, but you're not now. No idea what happened, really. Blame it on Malik, I guess. Ambitious little prick."

"You are indeed different than I remember you," Seto said softly.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am," Ryou said coolly. "Having your arm sliced open to the bone will make anyone subdued, not to mention sharing a body with a homicidal maniac."

"You seem to be doing fine now," Seto remarked.

"You wouldn't believe the hell we both went through to get to this level of 'fine'," Ryou said softly. "You don't seem to have minded killing a man, but who am I to talk?"

Seto froze.

"It's in the eyes," Ryou said after a few minutes of silence. "Always in the eyes."

"Hn," Seto snapped, averting his gaze hastily.

"I'm waiting on that really good reason still," Ryou said.

Seto stopped. Then he whirled around and grabbed Ryou by the upper arms. "You really want a good reason? Do you?!"

"Hit me," Ryou said, his smile mocking and almost masochistic.

Seto considered it, then kissed him instead.

Bakura's eyes flew wide and he stopped dead in the middle of the passageway. Mokuba ran into him, then stepped back abruptly as his skin burned with the furious energy seeping off of the spirit.

"Let me in," Bakura hissed. "LET ME IN!" he screamed. Before the echoes died away, he was gone in a gold flash.

Mokuba stared at where he'd been for a very long time.

_Dear God...what did Seto do?_

Seto finally pulled back, his mouth bruised and somewhat bloody, as Ryou's lips had been chapped and torn.

"I've just made the worst mistake of my life, haven't I?" he breathed.

"Yes."

Seto's eyes flew wide and he stared at the boy he was clutching more closely. Furious red eyes, canines bared in a snarl, and one tattooed hand wiping away the blood on his lips –

"Oh. _Shit._" Seto whispered.

Bakura smiled.

Seto started praying for his life.

Hinges screamed as the doors began being manually cranked open.

In the split second that Seto looked up at the aperture, a bony fist met the bottom of his chin.

Everything faded except for the triumphant laugh resonating throughout the room.

* * *

Fluffy: Well. Someone's pissed. whistles innocently

**kitten – **Sankyuu!

**Jargonelle – **But there would be no progress without mistakes!

**RunningInCircles –** Thanks!

**Hiso-chan – **So do I. I'm just experimenting with personalities, here. Go me.

**Liviana – **Uh...sweet?

**Psychopathic Sixth Grader – **Thanks! grin

**higashikaze – **It's a lot of fun to write, too!

**Elle-FaTe2x1 – **Sorry this took so long...I do update quickly, just not the same story!

**viva rose – **Sharpy is your friend.

**SweetMisery – **Warn me if it does, yes?

Duel: Woo. Fear. Review.


	8. In Which Seto Collects Bruises

Fate: Nya! It's done! Hee. Hee hee hee.

Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh does not belong to us. "Spookshow Baby" belongs to Rob Zombie. Listen to it during the latter part of the chapter. Really.

* * *

**::chapter eight::**

"Oh, hell," Mokuba announced as the doors creaked open. "Where's Bak — Ryou-san?"

"In here," Bakura snapped, tapping his forehead and glaring down at Seto, who was stirring groggily on the floor. "We switched."

"Did he kiss him?" Mokuba demanded. "Dammit, niisama!" he yelled. "You should know better than that!"

"No shit," Bakura spat. "We're leaving."

Mokuba grabbed his arm. "Wait!"

"Why?" Bakura tried to tug free, looking even more irritated.

Mokuba gulped and hung on. "Please don't go. I just want everything to be explained. I want this all to be over. It won't end if you just run away."

"I'm _not_ running away," Bakura shot back.

"Yes you are," Mokuba said determinedly. "Don't run."

Bakura went silent for a while. "Fine," he said after a long minute. "Fine," he repeated, storming out of the room. "Bloody hell!" he yelled, once out the door. Mokuba winced.

"What just happened?" Seto groaned, sitting up.

"You just took an uppercut to the chin from Ryou-san's very pissed off boyfriend-slash-yami. Don't you always tell me to _never_ piss off the girlfriend or boyfriend if the person's taken?" Mokuba asked.

"He seemed amenable at first," Seto complained. "Agreed to ignore his yami and all."

"Did you _tell_ him what you were planning?" Mokuba asked angrily.

"I wanted to discuss the business part of our deal," Seto complained. "And then he did some cool stuff with that necklace he had, and...and then...damn."

Mokuba looked unimpressed. "He knew that the darker one would come find him anyway. He wasn't planning on isolating him. I don't think you could. You'd have to rip off the Ring for that to happen."

"I should try that," Seto mused.

"Bad idea, niisama," Mokuba warned. "Very bad idea."

"And then I can analyze the Ring _and_ – "

"Haven't you figured out that you're not going to get a one-night stand with this boy?" Mokuba asked, throwing his hands in the air. "Just give it up already! Play with the pretty gold thing and ignore the boy wearing it!"

"I don't give things up," Seto said icily.

"You should!" Mokuba snapped.

"Would you have preferred I give _you_ up, all those years ago?" Seto breathed. "I don't give up on people."

"He doesn't need your help," Mokuba said, staring at the ceiling. "Neither of them need us at all."

"But I need them," Seto mused.

Mokuba tensed. "What?"

"I need them," Seto said simply. "They fascinate me and repel me all at once. I am intrigued. And I don't let go of things that intrigue me."

"They'll fight you," Mokuba warned.

Seto smiled. It was the smile of a king, the smile of a conqueror, the smile of a teenage boy who held ultimate power in the palm of his hand and had even more within his reach. "Let them."

"Yadonushi."

"..."

"Yadonushi!"

"..."

"Ryou...?"

"Go _away_."

Bakura sulked momentarily. He wasn't used to being ignored. He was used to being punched, having things thrown at him, and being screamed at. He welcomed these things, mostly because they led to much more interesting activities. Being ignored was _boring._

"You hate me again, don't you?" Ryou finally asked.

"_What?"_

"You heard me."

"I never hated you," Bakura said defensively.

"You treated me like a possession," Ryou said dully.

Bakura looked sullen. "That's because you belong to me."

"You shoved me into the back of my mind and did things!" Ryou protested.

"You didn't exactly fight it," Bakura snapped. "And when you did, you made life hell for me."

"But now you're going to put me away again and kill everyone and everything," Ryou predicted.

"...so you don't want me to?"

"No! Of course I don't!" Ryou yelled.

"Then what was that about threatening to have me kill everyone for you?" Bakura asked angrily. "I'm not a fucking hired killer."

"And I'm not a whore!" Ryou screamed back. "I'm not going to be pawned back and forth by you and Kaiba-sama as you fight for control of the Ring and of me!"

Bakura laughed. "As though he could control it. He'll never have you. You'll live forever with me."

"You don't know that," Ryou said softly.

"Do you doubt me?" Bakura inquired.

Ryou was silent for a moment. Then he looked up at Bakura. "Let's go out."

"...what?"

"Let's. Go. Out," Ryou enunciated. "You. Me. Slutty clothes. Skanky club. What do you say?"

Bakura glared at him. "You are _not_ going out to a club."

"So you don't want to see me wearing the clothes that arrived about an hour ago?"

Bakura reorganized his priorities. "I get to punch anyone who hits on you?"

"You've already been doing that," Ryou said tiredly.

"Oh. That. Right. Look," Bakura said, grabbing Ryou's shoulder. "You're mine. I'm not giving you up to some idiot boy with delusions of grandeur as a bartering piece."

"Don't I get any choice in the matter?" Ryou demanded.

Bakura shrugged. "Maybe. Where are we going?"

"You'll see," Ryou said with a smirk. "Your stuff's behind the bed. I'll be right back," he announced, sauntering out of the room.

Yes, ladies and...ladies, Bakura _is_ the luckiest person in the world, with the possible exception of Ryou.

"Nii-sama."

"Yes?"

"I'm going out."

"Where?"

"...a club?"

"Wait, _what?!"_

"They went out to a club," Mokuba said patiently. "Left a note and everything."

"How did they get out?" Seto demanded, throwing himself to his feet and clutching his head.

"We need some new guards. And we have lots of little plastic dolls now," Mokuba explained.

"...oh." Seto's eyes narrowed. "You know where you're going?"

Mokuba nodded. "Yes."

"I'll let you take care of things. I may go, but I won't interfere," Seto said.

Mokuba smiled. "I won't fail you." He turned and stalked out of the room. _I won't fail him again! I won't let them go...I told him not to go..._

"Hey, gorgeous, can I buy you a drink?"

Ryou looked up at the redhead leaning on the bar next to him.

"Sure you can...and get me one too," Bakura said, sliding up behind Ryou and slipping his arms around his shoulders.

The girl smiled. "I'm a lady, of course I will."

Ryou blinked. "You're not hitting on me?"

"Unless you do threesomes?" the girl replied. "Nah. You're just too pretty to pass up the chance to try out that line. Oi!" she called, waving a waitress over. "Give these pretty boys whatever they want for a next round, it's on me. Ja ne!" she said, walking off. Meeting up with a dark-haired, slender boy, she vanished into the crowd.

"That was weird," Bakura said.

"People do that to me all the time," Ryou said with a shrug. "Free beer, you know."

"Only beer?"

"It's hazardous down there," Ryou said, nodding at what could very loosely be termed a dance floor. "You need to have at least some coordination."

"Works for me," Bakura said. "Let's go."

Ryou grinned as the songs shifted and the pair was sucked into the dancing crowd.

_Oh, high noon, dead moon a hangin' all over you, yeah...devil man, yes I can...cut a little piece of you, yeah..._

Mokuba quietly surveyed the crowd from above, looking for the two spots of white. They'd separated upon entering the crowd but didn't seem to care, dancing alone easily. He couldn't tell them apart at this distance. Their features were too blurred.

He knew which was which.

_She's a killer, she's a thriller...spookshow baby!_ S_he's a killer, she's a thriller...yeah, spookshow baby..._

/Yami,/ Ryou called teasingly. /You ditched me./

::Yeah, and?::

/Why don't you come get me?/ Ryou inquired.

::Why rush fate?:: Bakura replied. ::You're mine. Forever. I don't need to look for you.::

/Aw, but I want to dance with you./

::Aren't you the one who should be telling _me_ to be patient?::

Ryou thought about it. /Nah. Screw patience. I want you./

He felt Bakura smile. ::Mmm. We'll see.::

"_Bright glove, mad love, a movin' all over you, yeah_, _psycho man, yes I can...do it all over for you, yeah..."_

Bakura looked up as someone's arms snaked around his waist, the whispered lyrics echoing in his ear. "Oh, there you are."

"Hello," Ryou said with a grin.

"Did you call me a psycho man?"

Ryou's grin morphed into a smirk. "Hmm. Yes."

Bakura smiled even more widely and grabbed Ryou, running fingers up his spine and into his hair. "How accurate of you."

"Isn't it, though?" Ryou inquired.

Bakura nodded, his eyes drifting closed. "Very."

"C'mon. Dance with me. We can forget everything that way," Ryou breathed.

"...yeah."

_She's a killer, she's a thriller...spookshow baby! She's a killer, she's a thriller...yeah, spookshow baby..._

Mokuba watched as the vocals faded and the two white-haired creatures dancing melted together and moved like one person.

Smiling wryly, he shut his eyes briefly, then opened them and looked thoughtfully at his drink. Then he shook his head, passed one hand over his eyes, and slumped back in his chair.

It was going to be a _long_ night.

* * *

Fluffy: Yes, that _was_ Ruoko and Lupita you saw. We're lazy with making up random club characters. Quite lazy. Now go read **Unrequited **if you don't know what's going on.

**RunningInCircles:** Thanks!

**Higashikaze:** You need to read _Fairydust_ and _Look the Other Way _by Pikachumaniac. Really, you do. It's what introduced me to this whole world. Mwaha.

**Liviana:** Laziness is god. I _still_ owe you a fic and a cameo. Email me or something? (go. read torikorosu, space podlings!)

**YamiKatie: **Sankyuu!

**Kitten:** Here you go!

**SweetMisery:** ;; Thanks...I think?

**Psychopathic Sixth Grader:** then!

**Inuko Millennium:** I like your name. Thanks for all the reviews!

**Jargonelle:** I got the idea from trying to figure out the flaws behind the security system in the Tomb Raider movie. I am a geek. I figured – well, you'll learn about it later.

Don't you think?

**ElleFaTe2x1:** Please do! And yes, he is being a bit of a stubborn idiot. He does that a lot in the manga, I've noticed. He's a strange one.

Duel: Yay! More please!


	9. In Which Mokuba And Bakura Talk

Fate: gigglefit

Disclaimer: Not ours, not ours, not ours. Well, okay, we claim Monique, but who cares?

* * *

**::chapter nine::**

"Mokuba."

"Mnn...g'way."

"Mokuba!"

"Go away."

"Mokuba, where _are_ they?"

"Dunno. You look."

"I can't, kid. You're asleep on the controls."

"Reeeh?" Mokuba lifted his head and blinked sleepily at Seto. "Oh. Niisama. Sorry." He yawned. "They're back...somewhere. Got in at dawn. They were pretty drunk. All over each other. You should've seen what they were wearing." Mokuba slumped back onto the table in the surveillance room. "What time is it?"

"Nine in the morning," Seto informed him. "How much sleep have you gotten?"

"That requires doing _math,_" Mokuba complained.

Seto smiled and slid one arm under Mokuba's shoulders, then put his other arm under the teenager's knees. "C'mon. Let's go."

"I can walk," Mokuba muttered, struggling faintly.

"No, you can't," Seto replied, hefting the younger boy with relative ease. "How drunk did you get, pray tell?"

"Two beers early on," Mokuba replied. "Didn't want to get too drunk. Had to drive home, you know. Put me down."

"No," Seto answered, striding to the elevator. "Top floor," he ordered.

"Yes, sir," the elevator replied.

"I'm fine," Mokuba announced.

"You're hung over and you've had about two hours of sleep," Seto retorted. "That's not 'fine'."

"'m not hung over."

"Oh, hush," Seto said. "That's an order, otouto."

"Mrr. Fine. Whatever." Mokuba's eyes closed as the elevator stopped moving and the doors slid open.

Seto stepped into Mokuba's outer room and crossed to his brother's bedroom, kicking the door shut after him. He carefully put Mokuba down on his bed, then ran one hand through the boy's tangled hair. "Go to sleep," he whispered, sitting on the floor next to the bed.

Mokuba nodded slightly. "'rigatou, niisama."

Seto stayed there for a long time, listening to Mokuba's breathing and trying to control his racing mind.

Meanwhile, several floors down and across the mansion, Bakura woke up. That is, he managed to get up, close the curtains, curse the sun with a good deal of vitriol, and collapse back next to Ryou. Who, of course, smacked him on the back of the head with a muffled admonishment to not make so much noise or move around a lot. Bakura came to the conclusion that being awake was stupid, and promptly went back to sleep.

Several hours later, Bakura rolled over and opened his eyes. "Bloody hell."

"Shut _up_," Ryou moaned. "The fucking room is fucking spinning and you're fucking making it worse."

Ryou was not a morning person. Especially not when he was hung over.

"Groo." Bakura more or less fell off the bed. "Fuck."

Ryou slowly sat up. "You're not going to let me sleep, are you?"

"Mrr."

While Ryou was not a morning person, Bakura was just really incoherent.

"Blast," Ryou muttered. "There better fucking be painkillers," he added venomously. "Yami, if you don't get up, the shower is mine for the next hour."

Bakura very calmly reached out and grabbed Ryou's ankle, sending him to the floor. "You're sharing the shower or I'm not letting you up."

Ryou twisted to look over his shoulder and smiled. "Deal."

What, you didn't think Bakura would stop at being the luckiest person in the world last night, now, did you?

At two in the afternoon, Mokuba finished combing out his soaking wet hair. This was an ordeal that usually took about an hour, not counting washing time.

"It's times like these that I freaking _envy_ niisama," Mokuba growled, padding over to the window and throwing it open. "_He_ looks like 'tousan did. _He_ looks normal. But _no,_ I have to take after the woolly side of the family..." He turned and made a face at the mirror. "Niisama gets 'kaasan's complexion, 'tousan's hair, and all the freakin' brains. And _I_ get the washed-out look, the woolly hair, and _multivariable_ _calculus_." Sigh. "At least I got full marks in that." He stalked into his study and switched on his supercomputer. "Ohayou."

"It's afternoon," the computer said severely. "_Where_ have you been all morning?"

"Asleep," Mokuba retorted. He pulled his knees up onto the edge of his chair and rested his chin on the joints. "Very asleep. Where's niisama?"

"Give me a minute to set up the connections," his computer snapped. "Or you could just take up residence in the surveillance room."

"Been there, done that," Mokuba shot back. "It's in the basement. I hate the basement. Any more sage advice for me?"

"Clothing might help," the computer suggested.

Mokuba looked down, then glared at the computer. "I _am_ wearing clothing."

"Made you look," the computer replied smugly. "Besides, you can't call those _clothes._"

Mokuba examined his clothing again. Shorts. T-shirt. "What are you talking about?"

"Are those meant to be shorts?" the computer demanded. "I could've sworn they were knickers."

"Oh, toss off," Mokuba growled.

"Monique's at the door," his computer added helpfully. "Your brother sent her to check on you."

"What are you – ?" The knocking on his outer door interrupted Mokuba before he could finish. "You love jerking me around, don't you?" he added over his shoulder, skulking from the room.

"Mokuba-san!"

Mokuba snatched an overshirt from over the back of a chair and pelted through his rooms, heading for the outer door. "Coming, coming!" he yelled. As he hit the foyer, he tripped, went flying into the door headfirst, slapped the lock open, and fell on his ass.

"So I heard," Monique said, poking her head around the door. "Seto-san sent me to bring you painkillers."

"I'm not a lightweight," Mokuba groused. "Two beers does not a hangover make."

"I couldn't say," Monique said delicately. "I get totally smashed with one stiff drink," she added conspiratorially. She edged around the door and gave Mokuba a hand up.

"Are you in another one of those horrible costumes?" Mokuba asked, looking the older girl up and down. "Bloody hell. Is your skirt sticking straight out?"

Monique smoothed her skirt down as best she could, with two voluminous petticoats underneath it. "No."

"I suppose it would be a reasonable length if it wasn't standing on end," Mokuba mused. "Why oh why must you wear these clothes?"

Monique shrugged. "Your brother, of course. Why else?"

Mokuba got a sudden and very evil idea. "Moni-chan? Dearest Monique, light of my life?"

"Mokuba-san, I am four years older than you and you _never_ butter me up unless you want something." Monique smiled wickedly. "Spill."

Bakura was lying face-down on the roof, listening to the most interesting conversation that could be heard from the window directly below him. He'd found his way onto the roof after a very...interesting morning. Yes. Interesting.

Ryou was now in search of a phone with which to call his father. Bakura had been in search of a patch of sun. He had stumbled upon not only somewhere really warm and sunny to go to sleep, but a good look into the inner workings of the younger Kaiba's mind. It was rather fascinating.

After the girl had left the room, Mokuba apparently went and started talking to himself next to the window. "Well. Now I've got the means to start my brother drooling over Ryou even more than he is, as well as blackmail information for just the opposite effect. Always be prepared. God, he's so _stupid._"

"No fucking kidding," Bakura called down.

"Hvwaaaaah!" There was a loud series of crashes following this startled yelp. "Ow..."

Bakura didn't bother to muffle his laughter. "Very elegant. Maybe someday I'll teach you how to rob tombs."

"Cute," Mokuba said, leaning out the window and looking up at him. "So what are you doing up there?"

"Being warm," Bakura retorted. "Nice plan you've got going. Humor your brother or blackmail him out of it. Pick and choose as the occasion calls for it."

"Exactly," Mokuba replied. "Thanks for coming back, by the way."

Bakura made a dismissive noise. "Everything's free here. At home we have to pay for food and stuff."

"And mortgage," Mokuba added.

"Oh, right," Bakura said thoughtfully. "That would be what got us into this mess. Who's in charge of mortgage stuff?"

Mokuba recognized this as a blatant warning sign. "Are you going to kill them?"

"Maybe," Bakura replied teasingly. "Solve our problems, wouldn't it?"

"You'd still have to get rid of niisama. And you can't do that," Mokuba told him.

"Sure I can," Bakura answered.

"Hey, you couldn't even off Yami no Yuugi," Mokuba retorted. "I place my brother higher than that wimp."

"You may have something there," Bakura acknowledged. "But the only reason the pharaoh fuckup is walking around alive is because the yadonushi would get all pissed if I killed him. And I try and avoid pissing off my hikari."

"Isn't that one of the contributing factors to your being here?" Mokuba asked.

Bakura scowled at him. "Well, sometimes it ends up in making out and raunchy sex."

Mokuba looked intrigued, sending Bakura into a near-gigglefit.

"Are you giggling?" Mokuba asked suspiciously.

"No." Snicker. "I don't giggle." Giggling-ish noise. "Unless it's evil giggling." Snerk. "I like you. You're interesting."

Mokuba felt an odd, prickly sensation sweep through his body. "Really now."

"Yep." Evil giggle. "My hikari likes you too. We might take you with when we leave." And to finish off the laughing fit, an evil mwaha. Ha. Ha.

"Didn't you already try that?" Mokuba demanded. A small frown crossed his face. "Twice?"

Bakura rolled over and counted on his fingers, lost in thought. "Oh yeah. Oops."

"Why am I always kidnapping bait?" Mokuba asked the universe at large. "I've been kidnapped four times, used as a bartering tool more times than I can count, had my soul sucked out and put back in, been hypnotized, been hit with a batsu geemu, nearly been attacked by my own Cap Monsters, and...well hell, I don't remember what else." Mokuba sighed. "Everyone always uses me to get to my brother. We have your darling baby brother, so do this. We have your kid brother, so do that. Pay us lots of money or we'll shoot your brother. Duel me because I kidnapped and knocked your brother out. Look what I did to your brother, I'm about to do it to you." Mokuba sent Bakura a variant on the evil eye.

"Hey, I'm sociopathic and disturbed. I'm not responsible for my actions," Bakura rattled off.

"Did Ryou-san teach you to say that?" Mokuba sniped.

Bakura blinked. "No, I just tell him that to piss him off."

"Ah." Mokuba wrapped a loop of hair around one finger. "I hate my hair," he said absently.

"You certainly have a lot of it for someone who hates it," Bakura observed.

"Okay, I don't hate it. But it's like having a sheep attached to my head," Mokuba complained. "A really big, uncooperative sheep."

Bakura looked confused. "Sheep?"

Mokuba racked his brains for a comparison that would make sense to someone who'd been raised in the desert and had been transplanted into a very large city. "Camel?"

Comprehension dawned. "Ooh." Assessment kicked comprehension out and decided to throw a party. "_Oh._ I see."

"I hate sheep," Mokuba announced.

"Have you ever _met_ a sheep?" Bakura inquired.

"No. But they must be evil, if everyone at school teased me about having a big sheep on my head instead of hair," Mokuba replied.

"And you didn't beat them up why?"

"I did," Mokuba said proudly. "And then I made them all work for me later on when I got good at Cap Monsters."

Bakura thought on this. It made a decent amount of sense. "Cap Monsters is that game that's like chess, right?"

"Kind of," Mokuba said, leaning on the window thoughtfully. "You see, it's a game of luck _and_ skill. Luck if you draw the right monsters, and skill if you know how to use them. Or skill if you can rig up the machine to give you the right monsters, and luck if your opponent doesn't notice," he added with a smirk. "I mean, with my older brother being who he is and all, I'm a damn good duelist, but I'm international champion at Cap Monsters," Mokuba added. "Is Duel Monsters your game too?"

Bakura shook his head. "Nah. We play Monster World. Duel Monsters has been around for a couple thousand years. It gets old if you don't take breaks to do something else. I'll make you a deal," he added.

"I'm listening," Mokuba answered.

Bakura smiled. "Cautious. Very nice. I teach you Monster World and you teach me Cap Monsters, and then maybe we'll duel."

Mokuba vanished from the window abruptly, then reappeared with a small machine and a board. "You have yourself a deal. Give me a second, I'll be right up."

"Bakura-san?"

Ryou whirled. "Don't scare me like that!" he yelped.

"I'm sorry," Seto apologized. "I, ah, wanted to discuss yesterday's events with you."

Ryou tilted his chin up and matched Seto stare for stare. "All right. Fine. Let's discuss it."

"There's a room on the mezzanine that will do," Seto said, starting up the stairs.

Ryou followed him warily. "So where's all the demand for my yami not to show up?" he finally asked.

"I figure it's inevitable," Seto replied, holding the door open.

Ryou stared at him for a minute, then inclined his head and took a step forward.

Seto smiled suddenly. "Unless I am the one taking precautions." He grabbed the Ring in one hand and flicked a knife out in the other.

"Don't!"

Seto tossed the Ring over the bannister with the knife hand and pushed Ryou into the room with the other. "Too late, Bakura-san."

Ryou stared at the closed door. /Yami? YAMI!/

Silence.

_...oh no._

* * *

Fluffy: It doesn't make sense to us, but we are following the tradition of putting the maid in a really skimpy outfit. Said outfit will enter into things later. Oh, and does anyone remember the packing twine and eau de rose? Anyone? 


	10. In Which Mokuba Makes A Mistake

Fate: This one's...pretty fast-paced. Keep with it. I've been _dyyyyyyyyying_ to write this chapter too, so I just went flying through it. Was fun. Sorry about the long wait!

Disclaimer: ...what?

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**::chapter ten::in which Mokuba makes a mistake::**

Meanwhile on the roof, Bakura abruptly turned deathly pale.

Mokuba's head snapped up. "Are you...translucent?"

"Mother_fuc – "_ was as far as Bakura got before he vanished.

Mokuba stared. "Well, shit." The implications of what had to be going on sunk in about five seconds later. "Well, _shit!" _He promptly vaulted the game board, grabbed the edge of the roof, and climbed in through his window. "Where's my brother?" he yelled at his computer.

"Mezzanine," the computer replied. "What on earth – ?"

Slam.

Mokuba grabbed the nearest banister by his room door and went sailing down it, then vaulted the next set of stairs entirely. Landing elegantly, he paused a moment to get his bearings, then raced off along the mezzanine. It was oddly quiet. Much, much too oddly quiet. Things usually weren't oddly quiet in the Kaiba mansion. Monique usually fell over something loud and vengeful at least twice a day, Seto usually had some kind of rowdy company, Mokuba himself was usually playing loud music, and their chauffeur was usually chanting mantras in his room and pretending he didn't work where he did.

In case you hadn't noticed, oddly quiet _very_ bad.

"Hvwaaah!" Mokuba squeaked, tripping over something and falling face-first into a pillar. "Owwww..." Rubbing his forehead irritably, he searched for the object which had tripped him, wishing all the while that he'd thought to bring his gun as well so he could shoot it. A lot.

"Wait a minute," he breathed, holding up the aforementioned object. "This is..."

It looked a _hell_ of a lot like a long piece of cord. A long piece of cord which happened to smell like old metal, sand, and blood.

Mokuba's gaze travelled from the closed door next to the pillar to the cord in his hand to the railing on his left.

"Well hell," he decided aloud, and launched himself over it.

Ryou had both hands clasped to his throat and was staring at Seto Kaiba like he was some sort of arrogant teenage boy with a death wish. Which, not unsurprisingly, he probably was.

"These talks so far have been very unsuccessful," Seto said after a long pause, examining his fingernails as he did so.

"Yeah," Ryou agreed. "They have."

"You were in search of a phone, yes?"

"Yeah," Ryou repeated. "This has been fun, but I want to go home now. Pay me to do tricks from there."

"I don't want you to," Seto said simply. "You intrigue me."

"Look, I can't possibly be the only Item holder around," Ryou said waspishly. "I've also got a rather _deranged_ yami. You might want to try that tactic on someone with a _sane_ darker half."

"I don't care about him, you know," Seto mused. "I really don't. I don't even see why he has to have a body."

Ryou took a step back. "Kaiba-sama, now you're getting even creepier."

"I want you," Seto replied. "Tell me that's not creepy too."

Ryou stared at him for a long, long moment. "I am in love," he said finally. "I love my yami. And he's mine and I'm his, and you are not allowed to do anything to break that."

"I cut off the Ring," Seto said with an easy shrug.

Ryou sighed. "I could like you, you know," he said after a long moment. "So could yami. Hell, he might even go in for a _menage a trois_ or some such thing. He's kinky enough to try it. But you...you thinking that you can _have_ me...you're going to have to learn to get over that."

"Or what?" Seto demanded.

Ryou smiled, slow and mirthless and beautiful. "Or I'll murder you barehanded right now."

Mokuba strung the Ring onto its cord and stared at it, swinging it idly in front of his eyes. _So much power...so much love...so much...everything! Everything I could ever want is in this necklace. _Everything. _It looks so harmless..._

_I wonder..._

_I wonder if I could wear it?_

A small, mocking smile spread over his face. _Now _that _would just fuck with everyone's minds._

He knotted the cord together decisively, then slipped the Ring over his head.

The world turned upside down.

"You'll kill me?" Seto inquired, one eyebrow raised.

Ryou shrugged. "Why not?"

"Why would you? It seems a bit harsh, for what you're talking about," Seto replied.

Ryou looked unimpressed. "You don't understand, priest-boy. You don't have the memories, you don't have the split soul, you don't have the need. No one is ever going to look at _you_ like you're the only thing that matters in the world forever, every day, all the time. No one's going to love you and hate you all at once. No one's going to be in your mind and all over your skin and in your body every second of the day for the rest of your immortal life. You're not one of us any more."

"What did you call me?" Seto demanded, confusion creasing his face.

Ryou shrugged. "Priest-boy. Now listen. We can all have a sit-down and talk things over, all four of us. Or..."

"Or you'll kill me?" Seto mocked.

"Or..." Suddenly Ryou went abruptly pale. He dropped to his knees, both hands clutched to his heart, eyes squeezed shut.

"Bakura-san!"

Seto was about to kneel down to see what was wrong when Ryou whispered, "He's...he's wearing the Ring..."

"Who?" Seto demanded.

"Your..._brother_..." Ryou collapsed to the ground with a soft, pained whimper.

Seto was already out the door and sprinting down the stairs.

_Wh...what the hell?_

_You're not...you're..._

_WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WEARING MY RING?!_

Mokuba whimpered and curled up tighter inside his mind, hands over his ears. "Where...where...what...?"

_You _idiot! _Take it off right now, you stupid little shit! Are you even fucking listening to me? TAKE IT OFF!_

"Ba...Bakura...san?"

_Who the hell else? Take it off! You keep it on, you're going to die!_

"...n...no..."

_All right, idiot, you can just fucking cark it if you're so goddamn inclined! Now give me back!_

"It...doesn't hurt so much..."

"Mokuba!"

Mokuba blinked hazily and struggled to his feet, grabbing at the wall for stability. "Seto...niisama..." He smiled weakly, wondering why there were bits of white streaking across his vision. "'hayou..."

"Mokuba?" Seto stopped dead at the end of the stairwell, staring at him. "Is...is that you?"

"...'course it's me," Mokuba said, leaning heavily on the wall. "Where's...where's Ryou-san?"

"Mokuba..." Seto looked thoroughly frightened now. "Mokuba, you've got to take that thing off."

"N...no...I like it," Mokuba said, struggling a little more upright. "'s all dark inside...'s nice..."

"Mokuba, you've got to take it off." Seto looked almost hysterical.

_I never thought I'd agree with that fucktard, but he's got a point. I should know, I'm fucking _in _your _mind _and it _hurts! _Goddammit, you're not _supposed _to have your ass in the Shadow Realm! Now fucking take the Ring off and give it to the nice man and go fucking collapse before it _kills _you! _Bakura railed in the back of his mind. _Are you listening to me, brat? TAKE IT OFF!_

"Nnn...like it..." Mokuba whispered.

Something snapped in the back of his mind. _Fine then. You like it so much, then have a taste of the fucking Shadow Realm!_

Everything went suddenly dark.

"Oi," Mokuba said, reaching up to the cord knotted around his neck. "Priest-boy."

Seto looked up. "You're..."

"Not the kid," 'Mokuba' said tiredly. "I can't move. Go get Ryou."

"Wh-why?" Seto asked.

"Do you want...do you want him to die?" 'Mokuba' said jaggedly, coughing.

"Bakura-san?" Seto replied, confused.

"Huh? What? Oh," 'Mokuba' said with another cough-laugh. "I meant the kid. You've got to get me out of here."

"Can't you just go back into the Ring?" Seto asked desperately.

Mokuba glared at him with red eyes. White streaks of hair were growing into his black locks, and his teeth were slowly becoming pointed. "You...you stupid fuck, you took the Ring _off_ Ryou...Ryou's the key..." He coughed again, spat blood, and then continued. "Ryou's got to be wearing it..." He slowly slid down to collapse on the floor, leaning against the wall. "I can return...but only to my other self..." He inhaled again, slowly and painfully. "You cut my link...and Ryou's link...and your brother's going to die for your stupidity if you don't _get my hikari now."_

Seto held out one hand. "Give me the Ring, I'll take it."

Mokuba laughed with Bakura's cadences. "Like fuck. Do you want to stand here arguing much longer while he wastes away inside?" He tugged fitfully at the Ring's cord. "Even...even if I hadn't pushed him aside...he wouldn't have the strength to be talking now. People...they just explode when they put it on, if they're not strong...aren't meant for it. He's resisting, but..."

"Then how are you talking?" Seto demanded sharply.

"I'm older than your country's civilization and I'm already dead," Mokuba-Bakura hissed. "Go. Get. _Ryou!_ _Now, _before the kid fucking carks it! Do you still want him to die?" His face turned dark and mocking. "It's all in here, you know...what you did to him. Tried to kill him, didn't you? Considered trading him for all kinds of things. He loves you with all his mortal heart," he continued. "And you've used it and used it and used it." Smirk. "Ku. 'Least I haven't..." Cough blood up again. "'Least I can fuck my host senseless, but you? You're just standing there, watching him die..." Bakura stared at him with Mokuba's eyes. "Se-to-nii-sa-ma," he dragged out.

Seto jerked like he'd been slapped, stepping back and fumbling for the stairs. Once he hit them, he whirled and flew up them. A door slammed, and he returned with a comatose Ryou in his arms. "Here you go!" he screamed, skidding to a halt in front of Mokuba-Bakura. "Here's your fucking _precious host!"_ Deep breath. "Now get the _hell_ out of my brother, damn you!"

"Ku," Bakura managed, sounding oddly like Mokuba. He tugged fitfully at the string around his neck, then wrenched the Ring off and threw it at Ryou.

Seto was already holding Mokuba and screaming for Monique to call a doctor before the Ring even hit Ryou's chest.

"Ya...yami...you're..."

Bakura was clinging desperately to Ryou's torso, the cordless Ring crushed between them. One hand blindly found Ryou's mouth and covered it.

"Mokuba! Dammit, Mokuba, talk to me!"

"Mokuba-san! Seto-sama, I called the doctor, he'll be right along. Mokuba-san!"

"We could leave now," Ryou whispered against Bakura's fingers.

"No," Bakura replied, just as softly. "We can't."

"...is he going to be all right?"

Bakura exhaled slowly. "Don't know. You," he said simply, turning his head to face Seto and Monique. "Stop shaking him. He'll wake up when he can. If he survived your wibbling about the Ring, he's probably strong enough to recover."

"I'm going to kill you," Seto said simply. "I am going to kill you if he dies. I don't care if you're dead already. I will _kill_ you."

Ryou's fingers laced into Bakura's hair. "Touch him and you die."

Monique sat back on her heels, one hand on Mokuba's forehead. "Enough of this talk about death," she said softly. "I don't care who's going to kill who. Mokuba-san is _not_ going to die and that is final."

There was a long, long silence.

"...niisama?"

Everyone stared at Mokuba, who was stirring fitfully.

"Yes?" Seto replied instantly.

"...don't move. Need to punch you." Mokuba made a feeble gesture in the general direction of Seto's face.

"I told you. I _told_ you!" Monique squealed as Seto promptly grabbed Mokuba up and hoofed it for the elevator as gently as he could move, Mokuba cursing the air as blue as he could in his semi-unconscious state. The colour was actually closer to a pale aquamarine. Monique scrambled to her feet, smoothed her skirt down, and chased after the two disappearing Kaibas.

"I am going to chain this fucking Ring to your neck with a fucking padlock," Bakura finally grated, turning his face back into Ryou's hair. "And weld it shut with lots of fire. See how people try and snatch it off you then. And put it on. Fucking stupid kid."

"He's got guts," Ryou said softly.

"Who, the CEO?" Bakura demanded.

"No. Mokuba-san. He probably knew what was going to happen to him, you know." Ryou sighed.

"Then why the hell did he put it on?" Bakura asked plaintively.

"...maybe he likes you?"

"Maybe he's touched in the head," Bakura answered crossly.

"Maybe." Ryou's fingers twisted tighter into Bakura's hair. "Don't ever leave me like that again."

"I'm telling you, I'm padlocking that Ring to your neck," Bakura said sleepily, a headache beginning to pound behind his eyes.

"That's...well, that's _really_ kinky, yami."

"Mmmf. Even better." Bakura smiled into Ryou's neck. "...thought I'd lost you there for a bit, you know."

"Never." Ryou breathed. "Never and never and never. You'll never be alone again."

Fingers trailed slowly across Ryou's face. "I know..."

"Yami?"

"Mmm?"

"We're in really deep shit now, aren't we?"

Bakura considered it. "Yes. Yes, we are."

"...well, fuck."

Thank you, Ryou.

* * *

Fluffy: Yes. So this was a touch darker than usually found in LDJ. Sorry-sorry! But...well...it's _angst_-comedy. Fun, yes? Whee.

**Wildcard:** Ack! Apologies. I got my info from a fellow floofy-hair-complainer, who blamed it on her Sri Lankan-ness. Mine I got from a long line of yellow-skinned, slanty-eyed Mediterranean females. Very sorry, and ENVY for tameable hair! (has been changed. sorrysorry!)

**O.o The Yu-Gi-Oh Freak o.:** Well, Mokuba nearly snuffed it...does that count?

**Kitten:** Isn't he just? XD

**lilmatchgirl007:** Mokuba is my :3 character. Yes-yes.

**Sir Mocha:** I think I can grant that wish, I can...::contemplates::

**DJ Silence Yuy:** Fear the maid's outfit. Bwahaha. And yes, the Ring _so_ stalks Ryou. ::is amused by mental image of Ring creeping about whilst Ryou isn't looking XD::

**Inuko Metallium:** Bakura and Mokuba are so much fun to play off each other. I saw no last remark. Really. Dun kill me. ::looks virtuous::

**SweetMisery:** Only in America, he would be.

**Chaotic Demon:** I think you just about summed it up. ;;

**Liviania:** I think overall Seto did a Very Stupid Thing, but it definitely gets cataclysmic points.

**YamiKatie:** ::blush:: Thank you!

**Saturn Imp:** But he didn't. Muahaha.

**Higashikaze:** Mental stability will be reported upon...next chapter? ::innocent look::

**viva rose:** ::evil, evil grin::

**QueenOfGames:** Seto owns their mortgage company. They leave having nowhere to go. And Ryou's still polite. And they did just kind of almost kill Mokuba. 

**R Amythest:** Woot for YGO!

**Kerei Kitsune:** Meep! Are you okay? Don't die!

Duel: ...you lot seem to be pretty good at this. Go you. Keep it up.


	11. In Which Someone Unexpected Appears

Fate: Nerg. Rating pushed up to R for this chapter. Because Yami no Bakura demands it. I am bad bad writer. Bad bad updater too.

Disclaimer: g'way. sleep.

* * *

**11 In Which Someone Unexpected Appears**

"Credit card, duct tape, free beer pass," Ryou muttered as he shoved the aforementioned items into a spare briefcase that Bakura had...er..._found_. "Yaaaaami?"

"Whaaaat?"

"What'd you do with the handcuffs?"

"...I think they're where we left them."

"If you lost the keys, you better find out a way to get them back."

"The keys or the handcuffs?"

"The handcuffs. Here's the pink fuzzy ones," Ryou announced, adding them to the pile. "Slightly larger handful of cards than I should have," he added, raising one eyebrow.

"...what? Stop looking at me like that."

"I'm not looking at you."

"Oh yes you are."

"Shut up and get the fucking handcuffs."

Ryou and Bakura had come to an unspoken agreement that even though leaving right away might not be the greatest idea, that being ready to leave at any given second would, in contrast, be a _brilliant_ idea.

"You do realize that we have a serious problem, right?" Bakura asked, busily undoing the lock on the stray handcuffs.

"We're kind of dead-ended here," Ryou admitted. "I mean, our best option right now looks like a plane ticket to Egypt."

"No, our best option is to kill everyone here," Bakura countered.

"Is not."

"...okay, no, it's not. But it's the easiest."

"Why the hell is Kaiba so interested in me?" Ryou demanded, rising to his feet and wandering over to the door. "He seems like he sort of wants to molest me and sort of wants to analyze my brainwaves."

Bakura made a nondescript noise. "I blame it entirely on your looks. Don't you know anything about his reputation?"

"No," Ryou said with great interest. "Do tell."

Bakura twisted his head over his shoulder and smiled. "The kid told me. Anything pretty, any night of the week."

"Do you have any idea how wrong it is for Mokuba-san to be the one to tell you that?" Ryou inquired distractedly. "Wait, wait, never mind, your ethics come from a time when incest was considered quite all right."

The handcuffs unclicked and were tossed in the direction of the briefcase. "Incest? You, opposed to incest?"

"I, er, um, don't look at me like that, um, um, mmmph!"

Bakura smiled and licked his front teeth. "You want me to – ack! You're being particularly vicious. Hey, hey, no biting the big veins! Bad hikari! Bad! Ow ow ow ow ow!"

"Stop whining," Ryou retorted cheerfully. "You know you get off on it."

"I'm already in a hell of a lot of pain, so stop it!" Bakura complained.

Ryou promptly complied. "Sorry."

"He can't have you, you know."

"Hmm?" Ryou blinked and looked up.

"He can't have you. I'll destroy the fucking world if I have to, but he can't have you," Bakura said fiercely.

"Yami...?"

"Why do you keep talking at the most inopportune moments?" Bakura wondered out loud.

"What do you mean by that?" Ryou demanded.

"Here I am, with the best pre-makeout lines on the face of the planet, and you go and keep talking." Bakura held Ryou out at arm's length to glower at him. "You are making this whole fuckbuddy thing really unappealing unless we're actually going at it."

"Ya-_mi,_" Ryou drawled, raising one eyebrow.

"Yeah?"

"I'm about to scream from the amount of stress and pain hammering at the back of my mind. Start. Talking. Now."

Bakura shuffled a bit, muttered a few incoherent things about nosy, annoying, telepathic –

"I heard that."

"Shut up!"

Ryou sighed, flung himself dramatically back onto the wall, and slid to the floor, one hand still extended to the other boy. "C'mere."

Bakura warily complied. "What's this now? Ack!" he added when Ryou hugged him enthusiastically.

"These are the non-fucking benefits of not shoving me into a corner of your mind and stabbing various bits of your anatomy when I get pissed off," Ryou answered. "What're you worried about?"

"You. The kid. That crazy man who's running around screaming, 'Dance, meat puppets! DANCE!'"

"Mmm." Ryou slid one leg around Bakura's hips and shifted his weight a bit in order to be more comfortable.

"Wha – hey, hey, this is _distracting!"_ Bakura squeaked.

"Talk," Ryou said warningly in his ear.

"I hate talking."

"No you don't. You just hate talking that isn't composed entirely of diabolical laughter and terrorizing mortals. And screaming really crazy shit like 'No! This cannot be!' when you're drunk off your ass and losing at some game that I'd rather not know about."

"...that was only _once._ And strip poker does _not_ count as a game."

"Mhm. Talk."

"I have squidgy feelings under my ribs," Bakura finally declared.

"Aww," Ryou replied. "You're getting a crush on the French maid who runs around and calls doctors on command."

"_I am not!"_

"Okay, fine, fine." Ryou capitulated. "Tell me more. Like who the squidgy feeling pertains to."

"...mostly you," Bakura answered, after some thought. "Lately 's been the kid. But you, mostly."

"Me?" Ryou blinked.

"You weren't expecting that answer," Bakura said wonderingly.

"No," Ryou agreed. "I wasn't. I was expecting Mokuba-san mostly."

"If anyone hurts the kid, I'll kill them," Bakura said hopefully.

Ryou grinned. "I'll help. What about me?" he asked after a pause.

Bakura twisted to give him a long, considering look. "If anyone seriously hurt you, I...don't know." He looked vaguely puzzled. "I can't hurt anyone else like I can hurt myself, or like you. If anyone did anything to you like _I_ do...?"

"Oh, come off it," Ryou teased. "I've died how many times now? Five? You'd just – mmmph mmr." Ryou glowered at Bakura over the hand that had been clapped over his mouth. And what was that for?

/I'm sick of talking,/ Bakura declared. /No more./

I'm not shagging you right now,Ryou said tiredly.

/Who said you had to?/

Ryou was in the middle of giving Bakura an extremely strange look when the door slammed open.

"Do you want to go home?" Monique asked abruptly.

Ryou scrambled to his feet and stared at her. "God yes. It was fun at first, but this...I don't want to be involved in this. I don't want..."

Monique promptly went over to the window and pressed her hand to the panel on the side. "If you go out this window, you'll come down right behind the fence out back. If you can climb the fence, you should be fine. We only have one or two guards out back, and they're easy enough to avoid."

"Aren't you going to get fired for this?" Ryou asked, blinking.

Monique put her hands on her hips and glared. It was an impressive sight. "I've been taking care of these two crazy boys ever since Gozaburo carked it. Seto-san's not going to throw me out anytime soon, mostly because he wouldn't last a week without me. He could try, and manage about three days before he went insane." She pressed her lips together grimly. "If you leave now, he won't keep having to talk himself into finding ways for you to stay around. He'll just let it go for the time being, and renew his interest sometime when he can handle it. This kidnapping thing is ridiculous."

"Amen to that," Bakura said, kicking the briefcase closed and throwing it out the now-opened window. "Wh-hey! Don't do that!" he added as Ryou dived after it.

"Catch me if you can!"

Bakura glowered at Monique. "That was entirely your fault." He promptly whirled and leaped out the window as well.

Monique blinked, then said, "Hmph," to the empty room.

* * *

Mokuba tossed and turned relentlessly, clawing noiselessly at the beddings.

_Somewhere someone was screaming, screaming bloody murder through all the fire. Young and pained and screaming themselves raw because nothing was left but the all-consuming fire..._

_Metal in molds in a circle in a loop from white hot to red to gold with an eye that sees..._

_All-seeing eye of Ra of Horus of God of HimHerIt sees me..._

_Sees. KnowingTruthSeeingKnowledge Sees me._

_is it wisdom or is it just destiny that tells me what to do?_

_what do i – _

_wake up..._

Meanwhile, one lone guard was patrolling around the back of the Kaiba mansions. One somewhat trigger-happy lone guard who had orders to shoot on sight. You know, since she was the only guard of the back and all. She had to be somewhat better than your average goon.

Can we all say, "OH SHIT"?

Ryou, as per Murphy's Law, promptly rounded the corner and barreled straight into the poor hapless guard.

You'd think the poor thing had a sign on his back saying "KILL ME", wouldn't you?

Bang.

Mokuba Kaiba woke up screaming.

Out behind the Kaiba mansions, there was a rather perplexed guard standing with a gun drawn. On the ground about five feet in front of her was a white-haired boy bleeding copiously from the shoulder.

And then, very abruptly, there was no perplexed guard. There was instead a good deal of blood spatter, a rather savagely attacked corpse with its throat torn out, and a blood-soaked teenager clutching what looked squickily enough like a heart.

Ryou and Bakura stared at each other. Ryou barely had the capacity to register the situation. However, he was doing a lot better than Bakura, who was in full Raving Lunatic mode.

"Yami?" Ryou whispered.

It wasn't altogether clear as to which of them fainted first.

Blink. Once. Twice.

"About time you woke up."

"...buh?"

Mokuba got up from where he'd been sitting and began pacing back and forth across Bakura's bleary gaze. "You've been out for a while."

"...buh?"

"Two and a half days!" Mokuba threw his hands into the air. "Days, I tell you!"

"...buh?"

"And you still don't speak coherently!" Mokuba flung himself back into his recently vacated chair. "Do you have any idea what you just pulled?"

"...buh."

"Aaagh," Mokuba stated to the world at large. "Ryou-san? Please be awake?"

"Two and a half days?" Ryou repeated. "Did you take the bullet out?"

"You're coherent!" Mokuba scrambled around the bed and dropped to his knees to face Ryou. "You're my new savior! Niisama's mooching around snapping at lackeys, Monique's having a heart attack, and your yami is catatonic! Even our chauffeur is speaking less than usual! Which is mostly never, but _still!_"

"Did someone take the bullet out?" Ryou asked.

Mokuba nodded. "Monique. She's our token medical staff too. Has a very revealing nurse's uniform and everything."

"Is she an android?" Ryou asked suspiciously.

"No...?"

"She seems to do everything, know everything, and wear anything, and yet she looks extremely young," Ryou said plaintively.

Mokuba raised one eyebrow. "Niisama hired her. Do you really think he wants to surround himself with stupid people? She's a bleeding genius in a French maid suit."

"Mmmf." Ryou flopped over and started peeling back bandages.

"Hey, hey, don't touch that!" Mokuba smacked his hands away reproachfully. "You'll never heal if you do."

Ryou rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "You realize you're talking to someone who's been dead several times and heals about twice as fast as normal, right?"

"...oh. Right. That. What is this, number five?"

"I didn't die!"

"Shut _up,_" Bakura said plaintively.

"No," Ryou retorted, sitting up and attempting to brush back his hair. He failed resoundingly.

"What are we supposed to do now?"

"Since you two couldn't evade one effing guard?" Mokuba finished.

"Something like that."

"Go home," Bakura suggested.

"...thank you, yami."

"Work out a deal with niisama," Mokuba suggested, staring fixedly at the bedside table. "You didn't really have a bargaining point before, but you do now. Mutual blackmail. You have – or had – a bullet in your shoulder."

"I'm not that evil," Ryou complained.

"I am," Bakura suggested.

"We know that."

"Yes, well, do you really want to be stuck here for the rest of your lives? Sooner or later I'm going to go to university, and this whole place will be a lot more boring," Mokuba predicted.

"Your brother could spawn," Bakura commented. "That would be interesting."

"Yami."

"Nnnh?"

"You hate small children."

"When did we start specifying that it was interesting for _us?"_

"...at the beginning of the conversation?"

"Oh."

Mokuba grinned. "Okay, I'm going to let you two get up. I think I'm going to go find Moni and niisama, because they've both been having minor heart attacks."

"You mentioned that," Ryou said sleepily.

"What, they were worried?" Bakura inquired.

"Just about everyone was," Mokuba answered. "Even the chauffeur was wondering about you two."

"Now that's devotion," Ryou muttered.

"You want devotion?" Bakura demanded as Mokuba rose and left the room. "I'll mumble mumble devotion mumble mumble pharaoh bastard mumble mumble mumble..."

_Lords,_ Mokuba thought fervently, running a hand through his hair – or trying, as he'd knotted the entire thing as soon as he was awake enough to freak out from the news that Ryou'd been shot point-blank in the shoulder and Bakura had more or less ripped the guard apart who'd done it. _He doesn't think that biting out the throat and tearing out the heart of anyone who hurts Ryou constitutes devotion? He'd better have been sarcastic._

"Moni!" Mokuba called, trotting down the hall. "Awake. Alive. Intact."

"Good," Monique said, looking tired. "Are you going to go tell Seto-san?"

Mokuba nodded. "I think we can cut a deal now."

"Oh God," Monique muttered. "Is that all you people think about? Deals? Blackmail? Weren't they just your friends to start with?"

Mokuba looked very struck by this line of thought. "Well, yes...sort of...maybe?"

"Or had you never met them before in your life?" Monique inquired.

"...somewhere in the middle?" Mokuba blinked. "It's very difficult to say. I've been kidnapped by Bakura-san, but I was kind of unconscious. And then there was the whole Duelist Kingdom issue, but that was one foul mess after another. And Battle City, they were there, but that wasn't exactly pleasant either."

Monique blinked. "Maybe you and your brother should try for the friends thing first, then. It might simplify matters."

"What, we just go, 'hello, we shot you, but now we _looooove_ you'?"

"...well, I was hoping you could be a little more tactful than that. Damn, there's the door," Monique added, looking up. "Go talk to Seto-san. Go," she added, making shooing motions.

"Meh," Mokuba muttered. "I have a feeling I'm going to have a headache after this talk."

"Not only you," Monique called up, clattering down the stairs and straightening her skirt. She hurried down to the large doors and pressed the button to open them, not even bothering to look at who it was out of sheer exhaustion.

"We want to talk to Kaiba."

Monique looked up, then stared at two near-identical young men with impossibly styled and colored hair.

"Whatever it is, we're not buying – _wait_ a minute," she said, her eyes narrowing. "It's you."

"We're going to talk to Kaiba right now," Yami no Yuugi declared. "Go and get him."

Monique glared. "Like hell." She took one step back and ground her heel into the button that swung the doors shut.

She then promptly craned her head to look at the sky – er, ceiling – reproachfully. "I did _not_ need this right now!"

Poor girl.

* * *

Fluffy: Yes. Yes, we are evil. Why?

**Manda Podima:** Heh. Was hoping someone would. ;;

**Saturn Imp:** Eh, sorry about that.

**lilmatchgirl:** Well, the action will slow down, so maybe the angst will let up and it'll get comedic soon...?

**Liviania:** I like that image too.

**R Amythest:** Wait 'til gets to this bit. R. Definitely. I have proclaimed it thus for this chapter. Because Bakura is an evil bastard.

**viva rose:** ....I don't update enough to deserve a flag like that. sobbu

**QueenOfGames:**I'm waiting for the Mokuba fangirls to come along and murder me.

**Ciu Sune:** ...um, please don't die?

**Kerei Kitsune:**I'M SO SORRY!

**Sailor Comet:**I have been entertaining this private image of Ringed-out Mokuba for a long time now. Muahaha.

**Higashikaze:** Well, y'know, he does his stints as the SuperBaddie in the canon, so...yeah? He's not a nice person...but he's FUN.

**SweetMisery:** Gotta love them Sennen Items.

**Kitten: **blush Thanks!

**Tuulikki:** Heh. Thanks. About the sentence...I'm so much of a zombie right now I could be speaking in Portuguese and not notice, so I'll...get back to it later....beh. Sleep.

Fluffy: Now be a luv and review.


	12. In Which Yami Makes A Bomb

(12)(in which yami no yuugi builds a bomb)(it's not a large bomb though, we promise)(we don't own ygo)

* * *

**::in which yami no yuugi builds a bomb::**

Yuugi looked reproachfully up at his other. "She looked really worn out, yami."

Yami glanced over from his setting up of a small explosive device by the door. "And?"

"So maybe you should just ring the doorbell again, or call, because I think if you blow their door up, that girl is going to turn into a homicidal maniac," Yuugi predicted.

Yami was forestalled from answering by the sound of a window being flung up. "I have a gun aimed at your cute little bomb," the girl who'd answered the door yelled. "I assure you that our door could resist the explosion. I'm not so sure about your skins, so back the _fuck_ off before I blow you away!"

"Eeep," Yuugi squeaked, ducking behind Yami. "Can we talk to Mokuba then?" he called up to the girl.

Her eyes narrowed. "Take that ridiculous contraption down there apart and I'll escort you inside."

Yami reached out with a toe and poked the would-be bomb. It fell apart in a poof of gunpowder. "Out of curiosity, how good is your aim?" Yami inquired.

The girl's eyes narrowed. There was a loud bang, followed by the placement of a tidy hole through the loops of the 'B' in the 'KAIBA' sign. "Lower hole?" she inquired.

"Lower hole," Yuugi confirmed. "Nice."

"I act as personal bodyguard at times," the girl said. "I'll be right down." Less than a minute later, the door swung open. Now that the pair had a good look at her, they could see that her gold hair was unkempt and her uniform looked rather wilted. "Kaiba-sama is not taking visitors, but his brother will receive you," she said formally. "Please come this way."

"Moni!" A slender boy with voluminous black hair cannoned into the girl, completely ruining what little dignity she possessed at that moment. "Christ on a crutch," he swore, glaring at Yami. "You really have the worst timing in the world."

"You say that because you're working against me," Yami said grandly. "Where's Ryou?"

Mokuba blinked. "Why did you want to see niisama if you're looking for Ryou?"

"Because he kidnapped him," Yuugi piped up from behind Yami. "Bakura came in looking for him on the warpath, and Anzu brought Bakura out here, and neither of them have come back. Ryou's father is looking for him."

Mokuba tensed. _Shit. Shit shit shit. So not what we needed right now._ "We thought he might do that eventually."

"What have you _done_ with them?" Yami demanded.

Mokuba put his hands on his hips and glared. "Since when do _you_ care?"

Yami spluttered, "Why, since...since Ryou is our friend! And, and, and...yeah!"

"You hate Bakura," Mokuba added.

"You kidnapped them," Yami retorted.

"We only borrowed Ryou. Bakura just sort of...showed up," Mokuba shot back. "They're being compensated for their stay. Niisama wants to look at the Ring. He's curious about all that magicky stuff. We have these new ideas for a new tournament, you see, and we want to do something with more microchips. Something smaller, that can scan the cards that the person is holding. We'd prefer to keep it as low-key as possible – "

Monique elbowed him in the ribs. "Enough. You _can_ go on like that. Want me to...?"

Mokuba sighed. "Your formidable lack of delicate sensibilities may be needed here."

Monique giggled. "So they're at it like that, eh?"

"Without a doubt," Mokuba replied. "Try leaving a note and waiting in the lounge."

Monique fetched out a pad of paper and a calligraphy pen. "'Stop boinking, your spiky little friends are here to rescue you. Yours, the management,'" she read as she scribbled. "How's that?"

"You remind me greatly of why we hired you," Mokuba said with a sigh. "Perfect."

Monique tore the sheet of paper off, summoned up a dazzling smile, and scurried off down the nearest corridor.

"And take the day off from that awful costume!" Mokuba yelled after her.

"Yessir!"

Mokuba turned back to the Puzzle-bonded pair. "There's a lounge nearby. We'll go there and wait. Niisama knows you're here, but he's busy having a panic attack." His eyes slanted to the two as they passed through into a small, airy room with couches and several windows. "You know, while you're here, I don't suppose you brought my order?" He smiled without humour. "Or were you planning on having niisama bring it to me?"

"Ah," said Yami. "This is revenge for making him my errand boy, isn't it? I've seen through your evil deeds!"

Yuugi flopped onto one of the couches, grabbed the nearest convenient buckle, and hauled. "Yami?"

"Yes?"

"Shut up." Yuugi turned the full force of the Puppy Dog Look # 4 on his darker half. This was the one that said "Put Down The Knife/Bomb/Fire/Alcohol/WMoD Or You Sleep On The Couch". Quite a useful expression, that. "Mokuba-kun, _please_ tell me what's going on."

Mokuba sighed. "Seto hadn't seen Ryou in years. Bakura strangling his other gave him a bit of a start, so he hauled Ryou off. After a bit of talking, niisama realized that he was wrong and this was normal behaviour, so he offered Ryou a rather large amount of money to stay here and be tested."

Yami surged to his feet again. "The cruelty! The anguish! How can anyone treat a human being like tha-_aaagh_!" he finished as Yuugi yanked him back down.

"Don't you greatly dislike Bakura?" Mokuba inquired, propping his elbows on his knees and leaning forward eagerly. "Why do you care so much?"

"Ryou is our friend," Yami said portentously.

"It's been a while since yami made someone or something explode," Yuugi explained. "Hence why we tried to blow up your door."

Mokuba looked unimpressed. "You'd need a lot more than a bit of gunpowder and two teaspoons of gasoline for that. I recommend nitroglycerin. Ryou's fine, I swear."

"Yeah, I am," Ryou agreed from the doorway with a yawn. "Sorry about the state of undress I'm in, but my shoulder fucking hurts, and I only have one shirt without something over where I got hit. I use the term 'shirt' loosely, of course."

"It really didn't occur to either of you to get normal clothes, did it?" Mokuba asked.

Ryou looked vaguely abashed. "Er, well, no. Hiya," he added with a wave at Yuugi and Yami. "Um. Something for you?" he added when both their eyes fastened on his shoulder.

"That is a bullet wound," Yuugi said astutely. "Now, I know that Mokuba is quite trigger-happy, and that the maid here packs a revolver somewhere under those frills, so please humour me when I ask what the _hell_ happened?"

"Oh, it was their guard," Ryou said, dropping onto the spare couch languidly. "Yami and I wanted out after we half-killed Mokuba-kun, except that the guard shot me. And then yami killed the guard. We're sorry about that," he offered, glancing over at Mokuba.

"Where _is_ he?" Mokuba inquired.

"His first instinct when he meets the...ah, pharaoh...is to flip out, more or less," Ryou said delicately. "So I handcuffed him to the bars on the window and came down here. He'll be down as soon as he remembers that he can get out of handcuffs without picking the locks with his toes. That, or he'll pick the locks and then be not-so-gently reminded that he is possibly the greatest ditz on the planet."

Yuugi slid forward with an expression of the greatest interest. "So the handcuffs are distracting enough that he forgets what he can do? Ooh. What else does this? I could use this."

"I'm _right here!"_ Yami wailed.

Yuugi and Ryou both looked at him blankly. "Yes, and?" Yuugi inquired politely.

Yami sought refuge in Mokuba. "I'm quite confused. What _is_ going on?"

"We hauled them in here, gave them an unlimited credit card and a few links to some very...questionable sites...and let them boink themselves into a coma," Mokuba explained. "Guns were just part of the fun."

"Hush, you," Ryou said, tossing a pillow at Mokuba's head. "Where's your brother? Yami hasn't shown up yet and he's not swearing at me anymore, so I'm wondering if Kaiba-sama stole him, locked him in the dungeons, and is performing really illicit acts on him."

Mokuba looked as though he dearly wanted to say something, but restrained himself. The expression on his face caught Ryou's attention, but the possible confrontation was headed off by Yami's sudden twitching. "Bad thoughts! Evil, bad thoughts! Evil thoughts winning! Inner eye in pain! Inner eye in _pain!_ The agony! The _mmph!_"

Yuugi, apparently, had noticed Ryou and Mokuba growing increasingly uncomfortable with Yami's posing, and had instead shut him up in the best way available.

Thank you, Yuugi.

"_Is_ everything all right?" Yuugi broke the silence and the snogs. "Here, I mean?"

"Yes and no," Mokuba replied. "It's just all...very complicated."

Yuugi got up, grabbed Ryou's arm in one hand and Mokuba's in the other, and towed them out of the room. "The three of us are going to go somewhere quiet and talk," he ordered when they got out into the hall. "Your brother is going to go chat up my yami sooner or later, and your yami is chained up somewhere and being ditzy, so I have a few questions I'm going to put to you two without any other interference."

"What?" Mokuba inquired as the three of them proceeded down the hall.

"How badly has your brother fallen for him?" Yuugi asked, jerking his head towards Ryou.

"Badly," Ryou and Mokuba said in unison. They both grimaced.

Yuugi pulled Mokuba back for a brief second. "And how badly have _you_ got it for Bakura?"

Mokuba jerked away from the whisper and stared at Yuugi. "I...no!"

Ryou laughed. "You are extremely bad at covering up that sort of thing, you know."

Yuugi looked reproachfully at Ryou. "This is supposed to be the bit where you wander on ahead and look at the pretty wallpaper instead of listening."

Ryou blinked. "But I've known about this for rather a long time. You've confused my yami no end. It's been rather cute."

Mokuba flushed obligingly. "I, er...thingy," he finished lamely.

"You know, it's like the opposite of falling in love with your great rescuer," Ryou continued with a huge grin. "Instead, it's your kidnapper!"

"Oh do shut up," Mokuba pleaded.

"But I'm having fun teasing you," Ryou replied. "You've got to give me that at least."

Mokuba considered this. "Yes, I suppose I ought to do that."

Yuugi mulled these new circumstances over. "Well now. This is getting complicated. Anyone have a crush on yami or me? You know, just to make it immensely complicated."

"I'm passionately in love with your yami," Ryou deadpanned. "Ours is a forbidden love, because yami hates him and Kaiba-sama wants to jump my bones." He dodged the swat Yuugi dealt out and continued, "I am forced to keep upgrading my deck so we can sustain our illicit trysts."

"He's still talking," Yuugi said mournfully.

"You could try kissing him," Mokuba suggested.

"Oh no," Yuugi refused. "I like having my vital organs in the correct places, thanks."

"Mmm. Good point," Mokuba replied with a grimace.

"I'm also told that I have a mean left hook," Ryou pointed out.

"That's also a good point," Yuugi agreed. "Oh, there was another reason we were here, other than to ascertain whether or not you were still alive."

"Yes?"

"Your father's trying to call you," Yuugi said. "You don't have your cell phone or anything, do you?"

"No," Ryou answered, looking vaguely stricken. "Crap."

"He wants to take you back to Egypt for a while," Yuugi said after a pause.

Ryou's eyes widened. Without another word, he whirled and raced back the way he'd come, skidding around a corner and out of sight.

"What was all that about?" Mokuba asked.

"Not a sodding clue," Yuugi answered. "Were you lot all crazy before you came here, or does this place make you people like this?"

"Oh, we were all already insane," Mokuba said feelingly.

Ryou slid to a stop by his door, panting and clutching his bad shoulder. _Egypt...Egypt...we can get out of here, but Egypt..._

"Yami!"

Bakura looked up from the floor. "Yeah?"

"Wait. You got free, but you didn't go barrelling down to murder the pharaoh," Ryou said, eyes narrowing. "What's up with that?"

Bakura shrugged, then sat up. "What is it?"

"Kemet. Egypt," Ryou said, closing the door and leaning on it. "Father will take us away, but to Egypt..."

"Do we get the choice of staying in Japan if we leave this place?" Bakura inquired.

Ryou sighed. "I don't know. Knowing my father, doubtful. He likes to keep an eye on me when he can, to make up for when he can't."

"What, doesn't he trust me?" Bakura demanded indignantly.

"He doesn't know you exist," Ryou pointed out.

"Yeah, well, it's as good a time for him to find out as any," Bakura retorted.

"He'll never believe it."

"Very true. Why are we dodging the point?"

"I'm waiting for your reaction," Ryou explained.

Bakura picked up a penholder off the nearest table and hurled it at the closed window. The window shattered, setting off a couple alarms as it did so.

"You're not into hanging around while my father pokes around at your civilisation and has stupid people talking about how you were primitive helping him out," Ryou translated.

"Got it in one. Can we just go there and _not_ spend time at that...dig-thing?"

"I'll give it a shot..._if_ I can talk to my father," Ryou added.

"If not, we're running away to Memphis," Bakura declared.

Ryou fingered the bullet wound in his shoulder gently. "This is, of course, assuming that we can get out of here."

"Of course we can get out of here," Bakura retorted. "You're just assuming that I don't blow the place up in order to get us free."

"Well, yes," Ryou admitted. "I'd kind of like to be able to come _back_ to Japan."

"Why? The weather's on crack, I barely speak the language, and it's too fucking polite," Bakura complained.

"Your Japanese is _fine._ Now, your English is horrible, but I am _not_ taking you to any country other than Egypt or Japan. Ever. Besides, your modern Arabic is worse than your English! Worry about _that!"_

"Says the man who speaks a grand total of five Arabic phrases."

"I can order drinks, though. Useful, yeah?"

"Yeah..." Bakura trailed off, his mind obviously wandering. "Yadonushi..."

"Hmm?"

"You know...your father, and all those people...they want to know for real what my language sounds like," Bakura began haltingly. "Do you have any idea...can you even imagine how I feel? I can't figure out an adjective. Old? Outdated? Confused? Angry?"

"You don't want to go, do you?" Ryou said softly.

"It's not like that," Bakura replied. "I just...don't know where...and things are so unfinished here..."

Ryou nodded. "I know what you know," he said, taking Bakura's hands. "You wanna go tear apart the pharaoh now? Mokuba said Monique was going to shoot him."

Ryou is officially the master of diversion, as proven by Bakura rocketing to his feet, grabbing the handcuffs, and tearing out the door. Ryou sighed and bolted after him.

Of course, the cuffing of the pharaoh to the chandelier in the fateful mezzanine by his signature belt buckles had nothing to do with their rampage. Absolutely nothing at all. Stop looking at me like that, Mokuba...

"Get me doooooooowwwwn!" Yami howled.

Yuugi snickered, then leaned over to whisper at Ryou, "So the handcuffs trick really does make them forget what they can do. D'you think you can get his Puzzle back from your yami, though?"

Ryou shrugged. "Maybe in a bit I'll seduce it from him."

"What am I going to tell your father?" Yuugi asked as Bakura ran to go get the candle-snuffer for the express purpose of poking Yami around in circles.

"That I'm shacked up with two rich geniuses and their French maid, as well as my psychotic twin, and we all have wild kinky orgies every night. And we have a pharaoh chained to the chandelier," Ryou informed him. "He will then come and take me away, not to Egypt, but to some mental institution. I'll just be confirming his fears."

"So that's the part where I tell him that Seto Kaiba has given you people a lucrative offer to stay and work with him on some new experiments, and that you can't get in touch with him at this time?" Yuugi translated.

Ryou looked impressed. "That is some expert fabrication, there."

"I try," said Yuugi modestly.

"Oh, hey," Ryou said as Bakura went racing past with the candle snuffer. "Give," he ordered, slipping past Bakura and deftly removing the Puzzle.

"I'll kill you later!" Bakura yelled, hooking the candle snuffer over a boot buckle and twirling Yami around.

"I would _so_ Mind Crush you if I had my hands!" Yami screeched. Fortunately, Bakura had the foresight to make sure that his hands had been securely attached to the belt buckle that connected the pharaoh to the chandelier.

Ryou quietly went over to the other long pole, lit the wick on the end, and solemnly handed it to his darker half. "Give me the snuffer."

"Ryou! I wanted to help you and this is how you repay me? I've saved your life five times!"

Ryou glared up at the howling pharaoh. "I _died_ five times. That doesn't count as saving!"

"I resurrected you a couple of those times," Yami offered.

Ryou shrugged. "Meh. I _am_ holding the candle snuffer. And your hikari _is_ standing down here laughing his arse off."

"Yuugi!" Yami wailed. "You traitor! Save meeeee!"

Yuugi put his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes. "You could save yourself if you thought for about five seconds. Maybe less."

"Fire," Bakura observed as he lit the candles in the chandelier. "Pretty."

"Get me dooooown!"

"Such noise," Seto observed as he walked into the room. "Ryou-san, would you like to explain why you seem to have suspended the ex-pharaoh from our chandelier?"

Ryou held his hands up. "I didn't do it, I swear."

Seto looked unimpressed. "Mokuba says that all the time, and every time he's lying."

Ryou immediately turned on the puppy dog eyes, brilliant smile, and halo of innocence all at once and focused on Seto. The poor sod didn't stand a chance. "...okay, okay," Seto capitulated. "My soul feels horrifically punished. Please stop."

Yuugi and Ryou did some complicated hand gesture. "Score!" added Yuugi.

"It is a plot!" Yami wailed. "An evil plot against me! Where are my priests when I need them?"

Yuugi and Ryou blinked at each other, then simultaneously pointed to Seto. Bakura tuned in about five seconds later and added to the performance. He then went back to the fascinating business of lighting Yami's hair on fire.

Yuugi turned to Seto critically. "You know, I really don't believe that you two kidnapped Ryou for a science experiment. I think you two just realized how pathetically empty your lives were and decided to inject some humour into your daily routine."

"Yamiiii! No whips! I drew the line at chains, remember? NO WHIPS!"

"Then again," Yuugi continued, "you two might just be indulging in matching masochistic fantasies."

Seto's eyes squicked out, assuring Yuugi that he had done his job well. "So listen, Seto-kun. Ryou's father wants him back. He wants to take him away to Egypt."

"He _what?"_ Seto demanded.

"If you want to keep those two around," Yuugi began, looking conspiratorial, "you'd better start making them realise it."

"So first you make fun of our attempts at keeping them and then you tell us that unless we magically perfect the art of seduction without actually seducing anyone, we completely lose all possibilities of winning," Seto said critically.

Yuugi looked thoughtful. "Well, yes."

"...oh fuck."

"Well...yes!"

"...Shut. Up."

"So you don't want to hear about the fact that Bakura is now spinning your entire chandelier around at about Mach Two in order to see if it will kill my yami?"

"I'm going back to my computers now."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the defensive maneuver of the Seto-us Kaiba-us is to flee for sanctuary as defined by the presence of large supercomputers. Maybe next we'll get to see a mating call or two, because the last few have been _really_ pathetic.

* * *

**viva rose:** Yay, flag!

**orangeaura868:** It'll be...uh...thingy. 

**QueenOfGames:** And it updated again! The horrors! ::grin::

**Sailor Comet:** mmm, probably about...sixteen, seventeenish. Somewhere in between. I'm assuming Mokuba has about three years between him and Seto. mneh.

**Kerei Kitsune:** I enjoyed that scene, I did. Wanton slaughter and all that.

**Liviania:** ::takes the green llamas and runs for all hell::

**YamiKatie:** I have fun tormenting Yami. Yesyes I do.

**Starring Lady G:** Oh yes, foreshadowing much?

**marikandcloe:** Sorry this took so long!

**Sweetflowerli:** That...just about sums it up, yeah...you want to write my summaries from now on? ::i kid, i kid...::

**inarae:** aww, thanks. ::blush::

* * *

**please keep it up, the reviewing....i know this doesn't update as frequently as i'd like it to, but i do try. ::grin::**


	13. In Which Seto Has A Good Idea

Nyo. Here it is. Sorry about the wait. It was sitting about a page short of completion for about a month and a half. This is proof positive that I am a Bad Person.

* * *

**::in which seto has a good idea for once::**

"Gooood evening."

"How did _you_ get in here?" Seto demanded, whirling on Bakura.

Bakura grinned unrepentantly. "You're supposed to be smart."

"My lock scans my eyes," Seto said angrily. "Not only are you not tall enough, but everyone has different eyes. They're like fingerprints."

Bakura shrugged. "I'm in, yes?"

Seto went to the door and looked at his lock. Or, er, what was left of his lock. It had been prised loose from the wall and set on fire, and all the wires behind it ripped out.

"I really should kill you for this," Seto remarked.

"Heh. Try it," Bakura mocked. "So listen, priest-boy. Ryou's father wants to take him to Egypt to go hang out and dig up my life. If I go home, it ain't to watch some idiots make fun of me. I mean, hell, I did some crazy stuff in my life, but they're doing it for 'science'."

"I don't see your complaint. I also don't see why you're telling me," Seto said coolly. "You looted tombs, you desecrated bodies, you're completely illiterate, and you're completely psychotic."

Bakura glowered at him. "Wasn't my fault I had to live like that. I mean, okay, they're mostly digging up stuff that belonged to the pharaohs," he said with a shrug. "But hell, I only really had it in for the ones that ruled while I was alive. Besides, I've been screwed over badly enough. I don't want to piss off the gods any more than I have to."

Seto said, "Fair enough, but why do I care?"

"If you don't talk to the yadonushi about what you want, we're going to Egypt and running away to Memphis," Bakura pointed out.

"Why not Cairo?" Seto asked.

Bakura blinked. "Why should we go to Cairo? They have _politicians._"

"There are politicians everywhere," Seto said dryly.

"Eeep!" Bakura looked thoroughly afraid. "Where? _Where?!_"

Seto started wondering if Yuugi'd had a point, what with the continual amusement thing. "Never mind that. You haven't even been able to get off the grounds. How do you expect to go to Egypt?"

"The pharaoh knows where we are," Bakura pointed out. "He can be used to get us out of here."

Seto gave this some thought. "Damn."

"Aaaand last time, I was being nice." Bakura looked thoughtful. "What I did to that guard? I could do it to everyone. I could burn this place to the ground, raze everything for fifty miles...I could do _anything."_

"Why aren't you, then?" Seto asked, his eyes gleaming.

"Well, for one, it won't get me laid. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"That's fascinating," Seto mused, completely deserting the topic at hand. "You can do all that? Are we talking you setting large amounts of bombs, or...?"

"This thing," Bakura answered, holding the Ring up. "Which is _so_ not the point."

"What is, then?" Seto demanded. "Do you want to leave, or do you want to stay?"

"This is your ultimatum," Bakura announced. "You have twenty-four hours to prove to Ryou that he should stay here, or we go...and we may not come back."

"And his little friends?" Seto challenged.

"Since when have _you_ been one of them?"

"Yes, well, I could very well pull another stunt like this."

Bakura smiled. "But you won't."

Seto was forced to internally concede that he had a point. "Twenty-four hours?"

"Twenty-four hours."

"You want me to finish what I've been trying to do for the past week or so in a day?" Seto demanded.

"Hey, most of that time, we were unconscious," Bakura pointed out. "Ta, now."

"But..." Seto trailed off as Bakura sauntered out the door and vanished into the darkness. He blinked, then pelted to the door and yelled down the hallway. "_What are the terms?_"

"Twenty-four hours," Bakura said distantly, followed by the sound of a door slamming.

Seto considered this, then smiled rather evilly. "Those are the only restrictions? I really will have to teach you some business sense."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the sinking sensation of an 'oh crap' moment being introduced.

* * *

Anzu scrabbled through her handbag, grabbed her cell phone, and flipped it open. "'lo?"

"Anzu?"

"Erm. Yes?"

"It's me. Yuugi," the aforementioned boy added belatedly.

"Oh, hey!" Anzu blinked. "What's up so late?"

"Well, we hadn't heard from you since you dropped Bakura off, so we were kind of wondering if you were still intact and had your soul in place and everything. Oh, and we have some weird news. We went to see Seto Kaiba this afternoon."

Anzu rolled her eyes. "Uh huh."

The afternoon in question was poured forth.

There was a long moment of silence on the girl's end of the conversation.

"Uh...Anzu?"

"I'd ask what you were smoking, but this is crazy enough to be true." Anzu sat on her bed discontentedly. "What are we going to do?"

"Well, I was kind of hoping you'd have an answer for that one."

"Anyone consider asking Ryou what to do?" Anzu pointed out.

"Yes, actually," Yuugi retorted. "He told us, very gently, to push off and stall his father until tomorrow night, at which point he'd try and talk to us again."

"So they're planning something," Anzu said.

"...yes."

"Oh Lord," Anzu concluded as the implications of this hit her. "This is one of those not-good situations, isn't it?"

"Yes. Yes, it is," Yuugi agreed. "And, see, the _real_ reason I called is...well..."

"Uh oh."

"Ryou's father is coming tomorrow. Here. And, um, we need to be suspiciously absent for a while in order to stall him."

"And that's where you need me to be a vapid airhead running the shop with no knowledge of any of you?" Anzu inquired.

"Erm...yes?"

"Excellent! I'll see if I can grab Honda or someone to help me out." Anzu sighed happily. "This is so wrong of me, but I can catch up on my girliness quota for the month."

"Erm...all right. I'll see you tomorrow at eleven or so. We need to be well out of there before he shows up at twelve," Yuugi explained.

Anzu grinned. "Right. I'll call for some backup."

"I have the nasty feeling I'm going to regret this," Yuugi muttered as he hung up.

Anzu tossed the phone onto the bed, bounced over to the mirror, and started ransacking her closet and her mental address book simultaneously. _Honda...Shizuka...Jounouchi...Mai..._

* * *

Back at the Kaiba mansions the next morning, Seto was up bright and early with a whole machine of Mr. Coffee ready at his side.

Yes, he also had Mr. Radar there too.

"Niisama?" Mokuba poked his head in the door. "You're plotting evil things, aren't you?"

"I have good reason," Seto replied. "I was given an ultimatum at six last night. I have twenty-four hours from that time – now closer to twelve – to figure out how to convince Ryou to stay here."

Mokuba very deliberately stepped into the room. "And you didn't tell me?"

"It didn't occur to me that you needed to know," Seto replied. "Do you?"

"Need to know? Yes!"

"What's your interest in Ryou?" Seto inquired curiously.

"Not _him_, the _other_ one!"

"The one that's kidnapped you, tried to kill me, tried to destroy the world, and generally is on a vendetta to blow things up?"

"...yes!"

"My faith in your judgement has just dropped pretty drastically."

"What about _my_ faith in _your_ judgement?" Mokuba wailed. "I've been realistic about myself all along! I'm not going to get this! This is not going to happen! But _no_, you have to go and be stubborn and willing to get Ryou at all costs and get my hopes up!"

"And this is bad why?"

"I've fucking fallen for his sadistic Mr. Hyde personality, that's why!" Mokuba proclaimed to the heavens. "And the _world_ knows it!"

Seto blinked several times. "_I_ didn't know it."

"Yes, you...er...meep," Mokuba squeaked. "Eheh. Heh. Bye."

"Wait a second!" Seto shot out of his chair, grabbed Mokuba, and hauled him back into the room. "We're having a talk about this _now._"

"We are not!" Mokuba decided, squirming in Seto's grasp. "We're going to let them go, dammit!"

"And why would we do that?" Seto inquired arrogantly.

"They're not ours!" Mokuba said, finally wrenching out of Seto's grip. "They're not our pawns! These are just two kids in love to whom we're nothing but background _noise!"_

Seto pressed a button that slammed the door shut in Mokuba's face. "I can come up with a reason –"

Mokuba's fist slammed into the door. Hard. "Let me out."

"Mokuba, I can fix this," Seto continued. "The only restriction the darker one gave me was the time. I can fix this..."

"Overnight seduction?" Mokuba asked. "I won't help you."

"Isn't it what you want too?" Seto asked.

Mokuba went very quiet.

Seto sucked in a deep breath.

"No, that is _not_ what I want!" Mokuba screeched, whirling on Seto. "How can you _say_ that? These people are much more like my friends and I'm not in it for a quick fuck! Once you get him to sleep with you, then what?" Mokuba demanded, fists clenched. "Well? _Then_ what?"

"I could run tests – "

"Do you _ever_ listen to yourself? God!" Mokuba backhanded the door with a fist angrily. "Maybe you just want friends too!"

"I gave up on that a long time ago, you know," Seto said gently.

"It won't work," Mokuba continued. "It won't. You'll hurt them and you'll hurt yourself. If you like him that much, let him have the time – "

"We don't have the time," Seto pressed. "I won't force him to stay just for shags and kicks. I want to see...I want to know what these people are like."

Mokuba drew in a ragged breath, then thumped the door again. "Open it."

Seto's finger hovered over the button. "Will you help me?"

Mokuba turned away and glared at the door. "You'll find out by six tonight, won't you?"

Seto decided that maybe he'd better let his brother out before he lost another lock. Mokuba stalked from the room, radiating offended dignity.

What Seto didn't see was that Mokuba made it about ten paces thus before he stormed straight into Ryou.

"Your brother is _that_ unhappy with us going to Egypt?" Ryou asked mildly.

"Just go," Mokuba snapped. "You know, you're a nice person, but I wish to everything I can think of that you'd never come."

"I'm with you," Ryou told Mokuba's back as the younger boy sulked off down the hallway. "This is turning out _awfully_," he added to a patch of shadow to his left.

"What were you expecting?"

"Well, I was hoping it wouldn't suck so much. Did you tell him my father's trying to sell our house?"

"No. I like that house. I'd rather not leave it. Can't we just _leave?"_ Bakura finally demanded. "Not go Home, not stay here, not...I mean, you're still in school! You can't just leave! I don't want to leave."

"The law likes to look askance at that sort of behavior," Ryou said severely. "But I don't know how we're going to get out of this one..."

"I'm feeling a desperate need to get drunk."

"Yami. No."

"Why not?"

"We've been up all night. That's the only reason we're awake. Remember?"

"Oh, right." Bakura grabbed Ryou's wrist and began dragging him down the hallway. "Sleep. I remember what that's like. Sort of."

"You're such a ditz."

"I am not. I'm evil."

"You're an evil ditz. You have the mental processes of a magpie and all the catchphrase ingenuity of a five-year-old. And you dress funny."

"And your insults go rapidly downhill after five AM."

"Shut up. Ack! Get your hands out of there! I said I wanted sleep, not sex! _Yamiiiiii_!"

Some things never change.

Some several hours later and across town, Anzu and Mai were both dressed in the girliest clothes they could find. Both of them were sitting on the counter of the Kame Game shop with Jounouchi and Honda quietly lounging in the background. Shizuka was filing papers in one of the back rooms, Otogi was standing by the door and looking thoroughly bewildered as to what he was doing there, and no one with the name even faintly resembling Mutou was in sight.

"Why am I here?" Otogi finally demanded.

"I don't know," Mai answered, examining her makeup in a small compact.

"Honda insisted," Anzu pitched in. "I don't know why."

There was a long pause while everyone looked suspiciously at Honda.

"How long is it until he's supposed to be here?" Shizuka asked, poking her head around the stockroom door.

Anzu checked her watch. "Half an hour."

"Do you think he likes to show up to things early?"

"I don't know, but Yuugi and his omote were certainly in a hurry to bail out," Anzu replied frankly.

Everyone pondered this for a second. "Do we even know what he looks like?" Mai asked.

"Um," Anzu began. "No?"

"I...see," Mai conceded. "Well then."

"We just act ditzy for everyone who comes in then!" Anzu said brightly.

"Customer," Otogi announced languidly as the door swung open.

"I'm looking for Mutou," said the man who walked in.

Anzu smiled automatically as Shizuka squeaked and vanished into the storeroom. _He doesn't look anything like Ryou, but who knows?_ "He's out," she finally said. "Can we interest you in our newest arrivals?"

"You see, my son's vanished," the man continued. "And Mutou knows where he is. So if you could call him up...?"

"No," Anzu said firmly.

"Why not?"

"My cell phone's dead," she said mournfully. "And I don't know the number because I saved it on here."

"Well, where is he?" the man demanded.

"I just work here," Anzu said defensively.

"Lovely Harpie's Older Brothers we've got," Mai pitched in. "First edition."

It was as well for the man that he couldn't see Otogi's silent fit of laughter from behind him. "No, thank you. I really don't think my son needs any more cards."

"He duels? Any duelist always needs more cards," Mai said cheerfully. "We've got a holographic Harpie Lady."

Otogi staggered to the door, pushed it open, and collapsed in a fit of hysterics on the sidewalk.

Everyone in the shop stared.

"Do you know him?" the man finally asked.

"No," Anzu replied. "Never seen him before in my life."

"Anyway, I really want to find my son. I haven't seen him in over six months," the man continued.

Anzu widened her eyes. "He's been gone that long? Oh my."

"Oh, no, no, I work abroad. He was going to the university for a while, but I'd like to bring him backto where I'm working with me," the man said. "He just seems to have gone somewhere for a bit and not left any indication of where."

"Harpie's Pet Dragon makes an excellent homecoming gift," Mai said persuasively. "They come in pretty wrappers if you buy them special."

Jounouchi quietly edged into the storeroom. There was the sound of a resounding crash and Shizuka yelling at her brother, which effectively covered the fact that Jounouchi was laughing nonstop.

Anzu devoutly hoped that she could keep up the innocent look long enough before Mai sent them all into hysterics. "Perhaps you could check some of the scenic areas around here?"

"How good is he?" Mai asked.

Everyone blinked. "Excuse me?" the man finally rejoined.

"At dueling," Mai clarified. "How good?"

"I, uh, don't know...?" the man trailed off.

"There's a tournament in Hiroshima," Mai said. "It's by invitation. Not exactly high-class, but a lot of university students go because it's summer and there's not much else to do. It's pretty well-known. Week-long sort of thing. It'll end in two days."

"Oh, I see," the man said. "Oh, good. That helps a lot. You know, I'll go there and leave you my number, and you have Mutou call me when he gets back. Does that work?"

Anzu blinked at how easy this had been. "Ah...yes. Yes. That works."

"We have Increase Luck cards. Vewy vewy cheap," Mai added with a smattering of batted eyelashes.

Five minutes later, she and Anzu had successfully rung up a handful of Increase Luck and packed the man who had to be Ryou's father out the door and past a still-laughing Otogi.

"Increase Luck?" Anzu finally asked.

"Ryou will like it," Mai said firmly.

"'Vewy vewy cheap'?"

"I read it in a book!"

"You definitely broke not only your boyfriend but Otogi as well."

"Yes, well, it was necessary," Mai said mutinously.

"_Is_ there a tournament in Hiroshima this week?" Anzu finished.

"Yes. Yes, there is," Mai said defiantly.

Everyone looked at her expectantly.

"It's a snooker pool tournament," Mai added.

The occupants of the shop promptly all burst out laughing.

Across town, Seto Kaiba was finishing writing down the details of a small brainwave. He smiled, checked his work over, and then asked to be connected to the telephone directory service.

"Hello? This is Kaiba Seto, of KaibaCorp. Yes. Yes, I see. You're looking for one Bakura Ryou?" Pause. "Yes, I know where he is. He's of great interest to me, you see. Do you remember giving him a gold artifact at one point? Circular, with a pyramid and an eye in the center? Ah. Yes. _Yes._ This artifact has a lot of interesting things about it. I'd heard from a few of my contacts that you were looking to return your son to Egypt with you. I'd also heard that you were conducting a dig on something that was also of some extreme interest to me. A town called Ku – yes, yes, I _see_. Anyway, I had wanted to offer you a small grant, and had also wanted to ask you if I could borrow your son for a little while. He is still going to university here, isn't he?" Long explanation from the other end. "Oh. Oh, I understand. I did so want to look at that artifact..." Wild protesting. "Oh? I wasn't talking about a _small_ small grant." Seto named a sum, then smiled at the calculating silence on the other end. "Please think it over. I'll enclose the check to your lodgings in Egypt, if you'll give me the address. No, no strings attached. I'm simply curious about that area."

After the proper farewells had been said, Seto hung up with a slight smile. "I've been targeting the wrong person all along," he mused out loud. "Game, set, and match."

* * *

**Inuko Metallium:** Demon...bananas? Oh help.

**Kitten:** Thanks. ::smile::

**MotherCHOWGoddess:** I'm the poster child for a drug-free life! Tra la la!

**QueenOfGames:** Eheheh. Please don't try this at home. Or at least don't sue me if you do.

**Elle-Fate2x1-2:** Heh. As are we all.

**Liviania:** Yuugi amuses me. I've barely touched his character since THSB. It's depressing.

**Sennet:** Awu. I'm sorry.

**Kerei Kitsune:** Sorry for the wait!

**YamiKatie:** I have this urge to poke your brain.

**Shadows:** Thanks!

**Sailor Comet:** This thing is getting weirder and weirder every chapter. It's scaring the crap out of me.

**SweetMisery:** Tra la la.

**viva rose:** Maaybe.

**allison lightning:** Thank you!

**acern:** Thanks.

**silver-dagger-113:** Oh good.

* * *

**please continue reviewing.**


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